"series" vs "series title"

noksagt

Can anyone explain the intended difference (if any) between "series" and "series title" for journal articles?

Per:
https://github.com/ajlyon/zotero-bits/issues/21
http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/17023/booktitle-overwrites-journal-field-when-importing-from-bibtex/
they may be redundant (and are treated as such by the CSL processor).

The only translators that use seriesTitle are:

• MODS: treats it differently from series, but makes invalid MODS
• RDF: treats it differently from series (as dublin core alternative title?!)
• Revues.org: does not handle "series" for journal articles (only for book sections
• Wikipedia Citation Templates: treats it same as series
• Zotero RDF: same as RDF

ajlyon

As you can tell from the schema review issue, there's something approaching consensus that there is no actual difference. The original schema design decisions have always been clouded in mystery-- I'd also be interested in knowing what the underlying logic was, but I'm pretty sure it was a mistake.

fbennett

I researched this in SVN once, but I've unfortunately lost the links since. IIRC the two fields appeared during a period of large structural changes in the code. One or the other might have been the consequence of a merge between branches. The checkins I saw didn't contain any notes relating to distinctive roles for the two.

fbennett

Here are some breadcrumbs. It appears to have been an incidental change that entered the code at r1291, during a period of intensive work to extend, refine and debug features in the 1.0 branch.

In trunk (seriesTitle only)
cite.js@743

Closes #63, Add ECL license info to source code
Added on all non-trivial files -- be sure to copy over XML or JS version as appropriate for new files

In 1.0 branch
cite.js@1291

closes #463, ibid and repeat citation support in footnotes
attempts, but fails, to suppress an inconsequential error related to communication with Word on the Mac (perhaps on the PC, too?). i encased it in a try block, but it still throws an exception. strange.

cite.js@1537

Adds support for the revised CSL schema and an APA CSL. Support for the old schema is maintained through the Zotero.CSL.Compat interface.
closes #563, fix defaults issues in CSL parser (now irrelevant)
closes #335, clean up citation code

Reverse merge
cite.js@1784

Merged 1.0 branch back to trunk

dstillman

This was the justification:

http://dtd.nlm.nih.gov/publishing/tag-library/2.2/n-ihv0.html

And to summarize an ancient discussion from before Zotero's public debut:

1) 'series' in journalArticle is equivalent to 'series' in book/bookSection, whereas 'seriesTitle'/'seriesText' is for journals only.

2) There are very rare cases in which there would be data for the latter two fields in journalArticle — for history, William and Mary Quarterly might be the only journal with series info.

3) "Series Title" and "Series Text" are misleading names, but that's what NIH calls them.

fbennett

Dan: Thanks for this info!

kshawkin

I understand the distinction given in the NLM documentation. However, the documentation at http://www.zotero.org/support/kb/field_mappings , as well as the Zotero RDF exporter, indicate the following semantics:

series: a series title
seriesTitle: an alternative title

which does not correspond to the NLM documentation. I suggest changing the documentation to say:

series: a series in which the journal issue or monograph appears
seriesTitle: the section in which the article appears within an issue

and changing the RDF exporter.

Furthermore, these two fields have the following en localization strings:

series: Series
seriesTitle: Series Title

I suggest changing them to:

series: Series Title
seriesTitle: Section Within Issue

Similar changes should made in other localizations.

adamsmith

Sounds about right to me -
in general, note that the field mappings page is old and hasn't been maintained for almost three years - no guarantees that it's still up to date. I didn't even know it existed.

kshawkin

Has anyone had a chance to look into my issue yet?

I think if the field mappings page is no longer being maintained, it would be good to post a warning at the top of the page. However, I see that it has been modified since adamsmith's comment.

fbennett

There is now a warning at the top of each page.

kshawkin

Oh yes, I see that the warning was already at the top of the page.

Still, I'm more interested in correcting the RDF exporter and the localization strings to match the NLM semantics. It seems that adamsmith agrees with me that these are errors.

fbennett

I added the warning a few minutes ago, after seeing your post. :) There probably won't be any moves on the code itself until the next major Zotero release, since much will presumably change with the facelift to field mappings.

kshawkin

You added the warning to http://www.zotero.org/support/kb/field_mappings ? I'm not seeing any revisions from today. Anyway, this page already has a warning, which I hadn't noticed.

fbennett

I only touched the pages on the site I maintain. Someone else should deal with the KnowledgeBase field; I don't know the content there well.

aurimas

Just wanted to note in this thread the following:

series is currently used in:
book, bookSection, conferencePaper, dictionaryEntry, encyclopediaArticle, journalArticle

and seems to indicate the series that the book, dictionary, journal, etc. belong to.

seriesTitle is used in:
audioRecording, podcast, videoRecording, computerProgram, map, report, journalArticle

and, with the exception of journalArticle, also appear to refer to the series that the "monographs" or "containers" belong to (but I could be misinterpreting). journalArticle seriesTitle would then correspond to a "section" within the journal.

seriesText is only present in journalArticle.

seriesNumber only covers book, bookSection, dictionaryEntry, and encyclopediaEntry