'Pages' field for imported items

alexreg

I've just dragged-and-dropped a few PDFs to import them into Zotero, and I noticed the 'Pages' field got set to unusual values in these cases. Could anyone kindly explain what is happening here? Are the values sensical, or should I just delete them?

Examples:

Import https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aat4457
-> Pages: eaat4457

Import https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ygeno.2022.110405
-> Pages: 110405

Import 10.1038/s41598-021-95144-x
-> Pages: 15728

Clearly, in the first two cases, the value of the field is equivalent to part of the DOI, although not in the third case.

Incidentally, is there a way to manually retrieve metadata for an item in Zotero?

adamsmith

Those are article numbers. Many journals that are published only electronically use them instead of page ranges to identify the journal article. In citations, they are (with the odd exemption of APA style) treated like page numbers, which is why Zotero writes them to the Pages field.

alexreg

Ah right, thanks. So this is what BibTeX calls the EID? I wonder if there should be a separate field for that in Zotero.

adamsmith

You can add them as Number: 123465 in extra and CSL styles will understand that where needed (that's what APA does). Zotero might add a field, but our desire to retrofit all CSL styles to use that field/variable is... limited given that there's no real reason for making a distinction.

alexreg

Thanks. It seems annoying to duplicate this information between 'Pages' and 'Extra', but perhaps I can get betterbibtex to recognise the value of 'Pages' is an EID, with a tag in 'Extra' like 'PagesIsEID: True'.