Theses repositories where Zotero Connector detects Journal Articles

iagogv

When I add theses from universities repositories through the Zotero Connector, often I find they are included as Journal Articles. From now, I will include here the examples I find:
https://unbscholar.lib.unb.ca/handle/1882/38229
https://minerva.usc.gal/entities/publication/a86c0626-d258-4ffe-ba5a-aea9b3280ebc

AbeJellinek

There unfortunately isn't anything in the page's machine-readable metadata marking it as a thesis — they should be setting citation_dissertation_institution. We're working on major improvements to the "generic" translators that we use for sites without site-specific support, though, and we should be able to address this as part of that effort.

iagogv

@AbeJellinek Thanks for answering. I see in the Full Item page link (https://unbscholar.lib.unb.ca/items/568c48b7-9dbd-4bea-90ae-8154f3220524/full):
dc.type master thesis

and I believe this is enough machine-readable metadata marking the item as a thesis.

AbeJellinek

I wish we could use that metadata, but it isn't present on the main page, only on /full, and even there, it's just in a human-readable table with no machine-readable semantic markup. I'm not really sure what the point of having it is.

aborel

The interface seems to be the frontend of a Dspace7 server, I can see some typical API urls in the network log of my browser.

There is probably a way to write a translator, maybe calling an existing one, but I can't tell how much work that would involve as I'm not sure what is available at the moment. There's a significant backlog of new translators waiting for review on Github as well...

AbeJellinek

Yeah, it's DSpace, but DSpace is way too diverse to write a single translator for all sites powered by it. The only structured metadata I'm seeing on that site in particular is Datacite XML, which we unfortunately don't have a translator for. (JSON, yes, but XML, no.)

There's a significant backlog of new translators waiting for review on Github as well...

True, although many of those have pending comments that were never addressed by the authors (or are just no longer necessary and should be closed). As you can see from the commit history, we regularly merge new translator PRs!

aborel

I agree, Dspace instances can be quite different from each other, my unverified hypothesis was that there might be a minimal core on which one might rely. But embedded metadata of passable quality would be easier to deal with, of course - and not unreasonable requirement for repository admins.

Sorry if my comment was too general: I am aware that updates to at least some existing translators are processed efficiently enough, my perception of the new translator case is perhaps biased by my own experience. One of my PRs has been waiting for any kind of action for over a year ;-)