Zotero citations vs external proofreading

mathiaspoulsen

Hi :-)

I'm (mostly) a happy Zotero user - trying to finish my PhD dissertation.

Now I'm about to send the text to an external company for proofreading, and I'm a little unsure what to do about the Zotero citations.

Is it best just to leave them as is and tell the proofreaders not to touch them? Or do I unlink the citations? But then what do I do when I get it back?

Any thoughts / experiences are very welcome :-)

Thanks!

DWL-SDCA

I strongly recommend making a copy, removing the Zotero codes from the copy, and sending them the copy. Keep your original version with Zotero intact.

There are so many things a proofreader can do that can damage some or all of your Zotero citations.

Are the proofreaders going to send you a copy back with word processor changes marked? Inked editor markings? Use your own judgment to determine which recommendations to follow and which to ignore. Incorporate the chosen changes into your original document.

mathiaspoulsen

Thank you!

Yeah, I was considering that (and I'll make a copy with the codes intact no matter what, of course).

I believe they will return the Word document with "track changes", so I was just thinking it would be a lot easier to go through the comments/changes and then continue in that document with the Zotero citations already active.

Hmm, or maybe I could merge the proofread version with the version with active Zotero codes (just thinking out loud now, because I don't have any experience with this).

I have asked the proofreaders as well, I just wanted to know if there were some experiences with this in the Zotero community already.

Thanks again!

tim820

Track changes in Word has been reported to sometimes cause issues with live Zotero citations ...
https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/debugging_broken_documents#microsoft_word

mathiaspoulsen

Thank you, that's good to know. Hmm, maybe it's better to *not* use track changes for the proofreading then. I can't quite figure out what might be the best compromise that doesn't completely destroy my many citations, but that also doesn't require me to either edit all the changes from the proofreaders by hand or add every citation manually from scratch.

Other thoughts are more than welcome :-)

tim820

Track changes are important in document reviews. Flatten the Zotero citations for the copy sent for proof-reading. You can cut and paste the changes you like from the Track Changes to your original as plain text (being careful not to paste over live citations in your copy). Keep copies of earlier revisions.

mathiaspoulsen

Thanks! With "flatten" do you mean "unlink"?

So just to make sure I get it right (sorry, my brain is a bit fried from all the intense writing and editing):

1. Make a copy of the dissertation.
2. In that copy, unlink citations and send that document to proofreading.
3. Receive proofread copy, cut/paste changes into the original document with live citations

Thanks again!

DWL-SDCA

Yes, flatten=unlink.

When I completed my doctoral thesis, I did not cut and paste but actually typed-in the changes that I accepted. Sometimes the editor recognized something awkward but (because the editor wasn't an expert on my topic) I rephrased the awkward text better than the editor's suggestion. You do not want to risk introducing problems to your document.

Remember that -you- are the topic expert and that this is -your- work. The editor should be finding and "fixing" typographic errors, awkward phrases, and the like. You must take care that the -language- expertise of the editor does not interfere with your topical expertise.

A chapter in my thesis was about effectively and efficiently searching literature databases. My otherwise quite good editor didn't like the word "disambiguation" and went to great lengths to replace the word. That would have very puzzling to my committee because that is the best term for an important concept in thesaurus development and key-word synonyms.

adamsmith

I'll actually go against the current here and suggest to send the document *with* live citations. There is definitely the risk that citations can break with track changes or if proofreaders/copyeditors change citation content -- but you'll still have the original copy of the document in that case.
The big issue with unlinked documents is that if you use Word's compare document feature, which is incredibly useful to merge track changes back in, if one of the two documents has unlinked citations, the output document will have unliked citations regardless of which of the order of documents. That means you'll be merging in, manually, all copy-edits, which is a very laborious and, importantly, error-prone process.

If you go with linked citations, the worst case is that Zotero citations in the returned document are broken -- you can then just unlink them yourself and are in the same situation as you'd be had you sent them unlinked in the first place.
The best case is that you'll just be able to work with the copyedited document and have everything work in a fraction of the time. You should ask your proofreaders/copyeditors to not edit citations and to make sure to only edit the document in Word to make this 2nd outcome as likely as possible.

This is different for sending a document to a publisher -- since they use automated tools for processing, linked citations can cause all sort of havoc and you should definitely send an unlinked copy as recommended above.

tim820

There is probably no totally ideal solution here. Unless someone has techniques that allow Track Changes to work 100% reliably with live citations. And Track Changes *is* the best way for others to edit/suggest edits for Word docs. Some other considerations ...

Having to prepare an unlinked version at this stage would also give you the chance to check that you can create a document that looks exactly like it should in final form. You will presumably be submitting an unlinked digital thesis at some point (if not for printing).

If live citations are messed up by Track Changes during proof reading (eg field codes displayed), that may confuse/frustrate proof readers not familiar with them. Whenever anyone is reviewing a student's work, you absolutely do not want to give them the impression that you have sent them a document with what they can only assume are careless errors (it creates a similar impression as spelling, grammatical, font errors, margin errors, etc). Granted paid proof reading is different to academic review/marking, where such issues are more serious.

I just recall MS Word documents passing through multiple authors for Track Changes-based edit/review with live citations (albeit mostly with other reference managers), where live citations rarely survived intact. Fortunately we had people to fix such issues.