Zotero Connector "generic" Translator

ashish-scite

Hi,

I've been looking into making it easier for scite + Zotero users to add articles from our custom dashboards or search results or Assistant references into their reference library.

I know that the Connector extension has various translators which can handle pulling the item metadata and push them into the library -- https://github.com/zotero/translators/

Is the best way to accomplish writing a translator for scite and opening a PR, or is there a generic set of attributes I can put onto the article tags in a dashboard (or search results) and have it pick them up without writing a custom translator?

I tried poking around the codebase and will continue to do so, but from my testing with the extension it seems like it doesn't show the itemSelector menu with the list of articles & checkboxes unless a translator has been separately implemented (no generic option)?

Thanks and hope you've all been well,
Ashish

dstillman

Generally, see Exposing Metadata, but yes, for multiple items on a page the embedded-metadata options are more limited.

Where is your metadata from, though? If your metadata is all from upstream sources anyway and always has a DOI, you could really just make sure there's always a DOI displayed, and Zotero will display the folder icon automatically and get data via DOI metadata resolution.

ashish-scite

Thanks @dstillman - yes, we always have a DOI, I just wasn't sure what tag to use in the element for the extension to pick it up. Will have a look at that link and figure it out.

dstillman

No tag — Zotero will detect all DOIs on the page automatically.

adamsmith

But I believe the regex runs when the site is loaded initially, so might not catch stuff generated dynamically via javascript. In that case https://www.zotero.org/support/dev/exposing_metadata#force_zotero_to_refresh_metadata might be useful.

ashish-scite

Thanks both, the force refresh is what I needed, it works now on our dashboard pages, will expand support as I get time later this week ;)