Creator Long names and syncing with group project

lunitaat

When trying to sync these author names to a shared group project this is the error that appears.
"The creator name “D.M., Rees, D.I., Sabia, J.J., Safford, S., Anders…” in one of your items is too long to sync. Shorten the field and sync again."

How does one go about fixing this problem ?

aborel

The record was created with incorrect metadata, with all actual authors captured as one big field.

You can fix the authors manually on your desktop, or find a source that provides better metadata and get a correct record from there. Someone can probably give you a more specific answer if you tell us how you created this Zotero entry?

lunitaat

I downloaded all of citations from PsychInfo into a RIS file, we tried doing this on two different laptops but it would only sync about 5 out of the 25 sources. Suggesting that the creator names are too long, but how do we manage to shorten the creator names properly without it affecting research.

aborel

I suspected something like that. Psycinfo is known for exposing incorrect RIS metadata (see for example https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/101616/cannot-sync-because-creator-name-is-too-long/p2 )

It would be great if the platform could fix this bug once and for all, so I would definitely recommend reaching out to them so that they become aware of their users' problem - I don't know if people have actually done that.

There is a Javascript hack that could fix most records for you (certainly more efficiently than re-entering all of those authors manually):
https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/comment/427614/#Comment_427614

Ideally, I suppose that this code could be included in a dedicated web translator, if specific examples (URLs, not just references) can be provided, and if someone with the relevant skills + Psycinfo access is available.

adamsmith

I believe we're fixing this in the OVID web translator already, but would have to double check

dstillman

@lunitaat: PsycInfo or PsycInfo via Ovid? This is a known issue with RIS PsycInfo exports from Ovid (and has been one many years). We've reported it to Ovid, but as far as we know they haven't yet fixed it.

lunitaat

Thank you everyone ! The code ended up working and instead of manually selecting every source i just selected all sources and applied the code and made sure it ran before testing with my research group. Big thanks! Hopefully this solves future problems for someone else too!