Abstracts don't import from Google Scholar

jwendolo

I'm trying to import refs through Google Scholar. When I get a page of references and click the folder, it lets me import all the references. However, it never includes the abstract.

If I do the same thing for PubMed, it import everything ok. HAs anybody seen this?

I'm running the latest versions of Zotero and Firefox.

noksagt

Google scholar does not store separate abstract information, so it is not in their downloadable metadata.

Zotero can't capture stuff that isn't there :-)

ajlyon

Google Scholar doesn't provide abstracts in its export formats. If you would like for them to provide abstracts, file a bug report with Google.

jwendolo

Thanks!

When I do the same search Google Scholar in Papers (trial copy) then export the references and import to Zotero, the abstract is present. I presume Papers must be processing the original metadata and pulling in the abstract?

adamsmith

no it obviously doesn't - Zotero uses the bibtex produced by google scholar - that doesn't have abstracts - you can look at it yourself by clicking on the "Import into BibTex" link under a search result.
I don't know what Papers does, but it clearly doesn't access the same metadata - possibly it gets the abstracts from the pdfs themselves or from another database - impossible to tell.

jwendolo

Sorry, I didn't mean it was using the metadata. The web page info Scholar provides often has a link to a more detailed page with the abstract (Like "Science Data"). I presume it must parse the web page and pull in the abstract.

It's a useful result though - I don't currently have much online journal access (I'm an independent), but the extracted Abstracts often have useful data in them like a chemical structure that gives me enough info to see if the work is useful. I can do a search on an author or topic and get a list of the most relevant papers. Pubmed seems to provide only about a third of the refs, so Google Scholar is a real help.

ajlyon

There's not much we can do to improve Google Scholar's results, but you might want to try collecting the DOIs of the relevant articles and using the magic wand icon in Zotero (Add by identifier), since the service that it uses (CrossRef) often has abstracts.