In text citations - google docs

ianmcn

Hi
I've just come across Zotero today, it looks amazing (anyone want to buy a fully licensed version of endnote off me?!). I've one problem though, I need it to insert in-text citations into google docs harvard style e.g. (Crilly, 1998). I know that it has the styles to do this, but whenever I drag and drop into a document it puts in the full bibliography reference. I've tried it set to all 3 Harvard styles available on your site, but it does the same with all. I'm sure there must be a simple solution, but I can't for the life of me find it!
Ian

dstillman

There's no way to copy citations by dragging at the moment, but there's a keyboard shortcut to copy citations instead of references. See the Shortcut Keys pane of the Zotero prefs.

ianmcn

Brilliant, thanks for that.

eliotmcintire

This works great for the in text citation, but there is no "knowledge" within the document that the in text citation was made, so no bibliography will be made from those in text citations. Am I missing something, or would I have to do the in text citation independently of the bibliography (which sort of defeats the purpose of having a reference manager for scientific papers) :)

bdarcus

eliotmcintire: your assessment is correct, but the place to complain is really Google. I'm surprised at how little progress we've seen in Google Docs given their resources.

The only way I could see around the problem is to hijack links and treat them as simlar to a field, but I'm not sure if that's even possible.

violalsa

Sorry, I'm probably doing something wrong, but I can't copy citations in the google docs using the shortcut keys in preferces. Some of the shortcuts work (e.g. close/open the window), but others don't. Do I need to check anything? I assume that you don't need to download any plugins.
Many thanks.

dstillman

Some of the shortcuts work (e.g. close/open the window), but others don't

First, make sure the Quick Copy setting is set to the format you want in the Export pane.

It it is, and some of the shortcut keys still don't work, they might conflict with other shortcuts on your system. Try setting them to different keys.

TheCyberProf

Maybe Zotero should offer an online editor, like Google docs, but designed specifically for scholars. If it was designed to work only with the 3 or 4 most popular reference styles, it might not be too complicated to program (e.g. margins, headings, fonts, etc would all be fixed.)

brianshiro

It's now February 2010, and I'm wondering if any progress has been made in making the Google Docs - Zotero linkup as robust as the Word - Zotero one. What I'd like to do is drag and drop (or type shortcuts for) citations into my text and have the bibliography be automatically generated at the bottom of the document.

fbennett

I don't think anyone at Zotero has undertaken to work on Google Docs integration, and the gist of the discussion above, in any case, seems to be that there are show-stopping issues with the Google Docs app itself. Someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you want to contact the folks at Google in the first instance.

sean

That's right. Google Docs doesn't offer any kind of API or dynamic fields like Microsoft Word and OpenOffice. Not a lot of wiggle room for Zotero to do anything with Google Docs beyond drag-and-drop, which it already does.

vogeltje

Now with the new version of Google Docs (http://bit.ly/a7rqxH), any news on the zotero/google docs front? Although Google just launched the new version, is there also something like an API launch? Google Docs actually seems a good contender for MS Office/OO.org, however lack of citation management keeps me from using it more.

fbennett

The Google announcement doesn't say anything about extensibility or a plugin API. Looks like nothing's changed there.

vogeltje

Yes indeed, but on the blog it also says to keep an eye on it. So I had some (false) hope that some insiders might have been informed of an API. A pity really. I understand that Google does not want to Open Source their cash cows (Search, Gmail, Docs, Calendar), like they do with Chrome for example, but an API for uses such as zotero of some sort would be nice.

Also, because they are already into the academic world (Scholar for example), will give them an edge. On top of that, the user percentage of Google products in the academic world is pretty high I think.

dmccart2

I was going to ask this at a zoltero workshop next week. It also occurred to me that I can just copy/paste from a googledoc, that I had been working on at school, to a MS Word doc Then add citations later. More work, I know.

farhaan77

What shortcut generates an in text citation - for example something like: (Smith, 2009)

I dont think there is any shortcut, for generating in text citations.

fbennett

Ctl+Alt+A is the default shortcut key combo for that one. The citation form generated depends on the default export style. Shortcuts are listed in gear icon -> Preferences -> Shortcut Keys. Default export style can be set via gear icon -> Preferences -> Export.

danuel

How about exporting to rtf and using scanRTF to create the reference? Instead of ctl-alt-a, it would be nice to change the drag-drop behavior to put in the citation intext for those who wish to work in a group to edit a googledoc.

badgett

Why not allow an option to use plain text code for citations in documents? RefWorks does this nicely. An example of their format is: {{722 Beattie,W.S. 2010;}}. Since this is text only and not a field or bookmark, it works in any document type including Google docs. When you are ready to create a bibliography, a parser (either web-based on located in a client word process plugin) parses the document to create footnotes and bibliography.

adamsmith

@badgett
http://www.zotero.org/support/rtf_scan
but this has some limits as to what it can do in terms of suffixes, suppress authors etc.

badgett

Thanks for speedy reply. This feature is great. Unfortunately, when I test it with FF 3.6.13; Zotero 2.0.9 and either Word 2007 or an RTF created by Google docs, I get an error message when I try to open the scanned RTF with Word 2007, "Word was unable to read this document. It may be corrupt." The text of my RTF contained "Testing {Musini et al., 2009} testing {{Arguedas et al.,2009}" and these are citations in my Zotero library. During the scan, the screen titled "Verify cited items" showed no citations.