Exporting to RIS format with citekey (share citekey with Bookends)

AnnFran
I am trying to determine whether there is any way to share Zotero's citekey with Bookends. I can of course just manually copy things over, but I had the bright idea to use Bookends' new ability to repeatedly import from Zotero to automate this process a bit, at least for newly created references. Much to my surprise, RIS does not export the citekey. After much googling, it looks like adding a citekey field to the RIS output is all but impossible (barring some scripting/coding that is beyond my skill set). Am I correct in this assumption? If so, will anything change in Zotero 7?
  • adamsmith
    Why not use BibTeX as the exchange format? RIS just doesn't have a field for citekeys, so we wouldn't even know where to put it. In terms of scripting this wouldn't be all that complex (I assume you are using BBT to get citrkeys?)
  • AnnFran
    That is a perfectly reasonable question! I went down this rabbit hole simply because Bookends has created a way of easily importing and updating RIS files. But I haven't really explored the option of doing it directly through BibTex. I'll need to spend more time with the Bookends manual and forums and see if I can figure this out. I'll report on my findings (and possibly pose more questions) tomorrow.
  • adamsmith
    If RIS is the only option and you tell us how you currently have the citekey in Zotero and where you want it in RIS, it's likely 3 lines of code to add (if even) to create a custom version of the translator
  • AnnFran
    RIS is indeed the only option if one wants to make "repeated" imports into Zotero, which means using a watch folder for Bookends with an attached script that automatically imports any RIS file added to it into a specified group in Bookends. For one-time imports, BibTex works just as well as RIS. This "repeated" function is a pretty new addition to Bookends, so it doesn't surprise me that you haven't gotten more requests for adding the citekey to RIS. But after careful thought, I realized that I was making things too complicated. However I end up getting those citekeys into Bookends, it doesn't have to be through the watch folder. More manual BibTex transfers -- or just copying and pasting -- will work just fine. Thanks for your help.
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