Date error in the field DATE

fab
when you import article from Pubmed for exemple, date are always as yyyy/mm/dd but in zotero the date appears inverted as mm/dd/yyyy.

The consequence is embarrassing when you want to export an article to another software as EndNote, bibus etc... because you get mm part instead of the yyyy part and so your article is registered as Sep instead of 1998 (for exemple).

I didn't see this topic in the forum, maybe I am wrong...
  • fab
    Here is a previous comment from Dan Stillman regarding the date field parsing. Actually, the problem occurs when you export a citation to a particular format (endnote, ris, bibtex etc...). The date field is not correctly exported and so when you import the file into endnote or an endnote-like software the year field is not at the correct place and so the parsing will collect the month part.

    Fabien


    * Dan Stillman
    * CommentTimeMar 8th 2007 edited

    The y/m/d is just an indicator of what Zotero has parsed from the date field. This lets you write something like "Summer 2004" or "circa 1789" and still have the field be sortable.

    Eventually there'll probably be a way to quickly clean up data, and converting the date field to a standard format based on the parsed data will likely be an option.
  • dstillman
    Not quite sure what you mean here. Is the problem in importing or exporting? You can hover over the date field in the info pane to see what date Zotero thinks it has, in yyyy-mm-dd format.

    If it's an importing problem, please provide a URL.
  • fab
    Importing into zotero is ok.

    I have just noticed a possible error with some exporting format from zotero.
    RIS is ok, the date field is at the right place and there is no error when import it in EndNote.
    But the Endnote,refer, bib export format is not ok I thing, the date field is not at the right place and leads to error when importing into Endnote or Bibus. You get mm field instead of yyyy field.
  • dstillman
    OK, got it, thanks.

    Here's how one reference describes the %D (date) field in Refer format:
    Date of publication. The year should be specified in full, and the month name rather than number should be used
    The current Refer translator puts the data in as, for example, "2004-05-30", when it seems it should be "2004 May".

    I don't see any mention of specifying a particular day of the month, so it's possible Refer format doesn't support them at all.

    We can fix this, but I think the take-home point is that you should always use the (somewhat) less limited RIS format instead of "EndNote/Refer/BibIX" if you have a choice. I'm not actually sure we have any need to export Refer at all, and having the format in the list may just confuse people and result in unnecessarily lost data... Does anyone know of any reason to keep it around?
  • fab
    You're right. The RIS format is clearly the best choice. It is compatible with Endnote, Reference manager and Bibus (open source project).

    Anyway, zotero is amazing. Congratulations.
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