Import from Papers3 via XML: 'Conference Paper' gets converted to 'Presentation'

Chromaticity

Hi,

I'm a long-time user of Papers3 and I would like to switch to Zotero. Therefore, I have exported EndNoteXML from Papers3, and then imported the XML into Zotero 6 on Mac.

Overall, the import went well. I followed the discussion in https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/77910/switching-to-zotero-from-papers, and used Dan Hobley's helpful script to convert any special characters (mainly ampersands) https://gist.github.com/SiccarPoint/2729c64e4a5fa009d0e92fda68b95ddf.

However, a big issue for me is that items which were originally entered as 'Conference Paper' or 'Conference Proceedings' get imported as 'Presentation', with the conference name now listed as meeting name, and additional field values such as pages, volume, number, etc. retained as a note.

Example entries from my exported XML file:

<ref-type name="Conference Proceedings">10</ref-type>

<ref-type name="Conference Paper">47</ref-type>

Has anyone else run into this problem, or might know a workaround to this?

(Around half my library is conference papers, so I don't fancy editing it manually!)

Many thanks,

Greg

adamsmith

Are you sure about conference proceedings (10)? Those should import as conference papers in Zotero. And if that's the case, you could simply run a search & replace in the XML file before importing. (It's also possible to change in the import code, but that's not really easier in this case).

Chromaticity

Hi adamsmith,

Many thanks for your input.

I went back and followed entries in Papers3 through to the XML export and then into Zotero. It looks like the inital export from Papers3 is at fault, as it tags entries incorrectly - in fact it has the effect of swapping the item types of conference papers and presentations!

Example #1:
...
Papers3 original item type description
Media > "Lecture" ( slides and lecture notes, for example)
...
Papers3 exported XML item type
"Conference Proceedings"
...
Zotero imported item type
"Conference Paper"

Example #2:
...
Papers3 original item type description
"Conference Proceedings"
...
Papers3 exported XML item type
"Conference Paper"
...
Zotero imported item type
"Presentation"

As you suggested, the solution was to run a search & replace on the XML file in order to swap over these two particular ref-type tags. After that, the import into Zotero was successful.

Much appreciated,

Regards,


Greg