Zotero doesn't retrieve bibliographic data from articles published in pdf format

Eric Weir

Using the Safari connector and Zotero Standalone I am unable to retrieve bibliographic data on a magazine article published in pdf format. The article is from the current issue of the magazine -- American Educator -- not in the archive of past issues. The article is not available as a web page.

I've tried saving the pdf, storing a copy in Zotero, and then doing a "retrieve metadata for pdf, but Zotero reports "Could not read text from pdf."

I located another article from the same issue of this magazine through Google Scholar. When I saved a copy in Zotero the bibliographic information was incomplete. [It had only the name of the publication and the year of publication.]

I'm guessing this is not possible, that in this situation the bibliographic data have to be entered manually.

is that right?

Thanks,

adamsmith

I'm guessing this is not possible, that in this situation the bibliographic data have to be entered manually.
is that right?

yes.

Eric Weir

Thanks, Adam. I guess there's not much bibliographic software developers can do as long as there's no standard format for incorporating bibliographic data in pdfs.

adamsmith

Mendeley tries to read meta-tags from pdfs - my understanding is that the results are, so far, utterly underwhelming (Mendeley also uses strategies similar to Zotero for getting pdf metadata, so its overall results are similar.)