Reference skip disadvantages

silverbeats

In the past version, clicking on the position of the text citation can also directly jump to the corresponding position of the reference list. However, this important feature was lost in version 7.0.9. References are displayed in the body as "author's last name + year", and from Figures 1 and 2, zetero 7.0.9 treats "author's last name" and "year" as two parts, which is not appropriate. In addition, click on "name" and click on "year", the jump position is different.



https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u10788766/2xgxpggh31u3hkebrvg9.png

https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u10788766/3oaxe7ubecsqdh3ttfdr.png

martynas_b

If it recognizes the author and/or year, it displays all matching references in a popup. Otherwise, if the in-text citation has an internal link, it shows a preview popup.

Which version of Zotero are you comparing this with? In one screenshot, you are hovering over "Xu" and in the other over "2022b", so I don’t see how this reflects a difference between Zotero versions.

silverbeats

Compared to zotero 6.0.36.

In this discussion, I want to highlight the problem of jump accuracy. In zetero6, whether I click "Xu et al." or "2022b", it can be accurately redirected. However, in zetero7.0.9, when I click "Xu et al.", it will jump to "Cosplay:" in Figure 1. This doesn't seem right like the "year" does not match, it should be "2022b" instead of "2022a". An example of the wrong jump is shown in Figure 3. Figure 4 shows what I got when I clicked on "2022b". The jump was correct, but not as good as zetero6.

In Zetero 6.0.36, clicking on a reference skip causes the target document to appear at the top of the view for easy finding. As shown in Figure 5.



Figure 3 Wrong reference jump in Zetero7
https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u10788766/s4wxt206njttbhxii251.png


Figure 4 The view when I clicked 2022b
https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u10788766/g6bkw54comxvhjub6syc.png

Figure 5 The view when I clicked name or year in Zotero 6.0.36
https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u10788766/x2r1s7xr5q4nn1v2z5ze.png

martynas_b

Usually, the correct reference is the first one in the popup, but not always. For this reason, it lists all possible options. In this case, you should click the last reference in the popup to navigate to it.

silverbeats

Your suggestion is to click on the last candidate to jump. Is that always true? If the reader still needs to find the right target in the candidates to jump correctly... Does this defeat the purpose of this feature?
I think the original intention should be to click on the reference to jump accurately. While it's good to present all possible options, I don't think we should lose sight of the original intention.

martynas_b

Many PDFs have internal links that don’t go to an exact spot on the target page. We’re working on improving citation matching to show the best result first, but this new approach generally works better.

Are you saying you’d prefer to turn off this feature because it performs worse on average for you?

silverbeats

Yes, regarding the reference link jumping, I don't really care about seeing the possible
options. I only care whether it can accurately jump.

silverbeats

Perhaps, this part of the function can be considered to let the user decide. For example, let the user decide whether to use zotero7 for reference jumping or zotero6 for reference jumping.

silverbeats

Or, consider the year when ranking the candidate literature, and try to make the correct result rank first always.

martynas_b

It already uses the year, but not when there are additional letters added to it.