edited books

csalzman · November 27, 2007

If you import data from RefMan databases or from internetsites there occurs a problem with the right label at edited books. I tested it with a RefMan Database (via export as RIS-file) and with the import from the amazon homepage. At bookchapters or at edited books the editor gets the wrong label (as author or Mitarbeiter (in the german version)). When you create a bibliography this problem will make trouble. I didnt check if there is the same problem with other webpages or Endnote databases but it seems to be a systematic problem.

Tjowens · November 27, 2007

I assure you, the issue is more about the ambiguity of many interchange formats than with issues on our end. RIS, among other issues, does not make good distinctions between authors and editors. A similar issue happens with MARC records. If you have the ability to export the collection in another format it might mitigate some of these issues. For example BibTeX does a better job at expressing the difference between authors and editors.

csalzman · November 28, 2007

Thank you for your help! The problem is that RefMan has no export-option that works. Neither zotero nor EndNote is able to import different RefMan-Export-files correctly. There is always the same problem that the importet data lable editors as autors or contributors. Is there a possibility to give zotero the information, that it has to import the field taged as A2 (or ED) as editor, not as contributor? Or is there a possibility to change contributor-fields into editor-fields automatically?

csalzman · November 29, 2007

Found a solution for converting a RefMan database into Cotero without the “author/editor” problem:
Download a BibTeX output style from the web, often you must modify the output style via the tool in RefMan (this is the crucial point ;-) ), generate a bibliography in RefMan via the modified output style in a txt-file (do not use the export-tool!), than you can import the txt-file (BibTeX format) into Cotero. I did some modification at the output style that I found in the web and it worked well – but I create the output style for only four reference types (book, book chapter, journal article and thesis).