Metadata from Nature won't download

rrimler

Hi all,

Sorry if this has been covered before and I didn't see it-- When I try to download a paper from Nature, the PDF goes to my Zotero library but the metadata does not. I get an error message that reads: "PDF does not contain OCRed text."

Here is the error report ID: 1673926539

Thanks!

adamsmith

how are you downloading the paper? and which paper?

rrimler

I just click the little "pdf" link under the item listed. It's occurred with each paper I tried. Here's an example of a page where the "pdf" links don't seem to work properly: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v373/n6509/index.html

adamsmith

This is exactly what Zotero says: The PDFs don't have any OCRd text - they are just image scans of the articles with no text that Zotero could use/read to get the item metadata.

If you use the icon in the URL bar to import the metadata for the articles you want to Zotero, you can then attach the PDFs to the metadata - it's one step more, but it's the best we have for sites like that. (For newer Nature articles, the PDF will automatically get attached to the imported metadata).

Simon

Those PDFs don't have any OCRed text because they are from 1995. I don't think this is a problem for Nature PDFs from the last 10 years.

You can save the metadata using the folder icon in the address bar (although it may take a little to load the list while since Zotero has to look up all the DOIs) and then drag the PDF link onto the entry in Zotero.

rrimler

Thanks for your replies. Using the folder icon in my address bar brings up a list of items, but when I click one article to retrieve, it either doesn't work or is happening so slowly that it's not worth doing it this way.

adamsmith

You can copy&paste the DOI and use add by identifier (magic wand) in Zotero if that's faster for you.
But that's pretty much it - there is no quicker way to get articles from that site.

aurimas

Using the folder icon in my address bar brings up a list of items, but when I click one article to retrieve, it either doesn't work or is happening so slowly that it's not worth doing it this way.

That is very odd, since almost all metadata should already be downloaded once the list pops up. I'll investigate this later tonight.

Perhaps this should be added to nature's translator anyway.

aurimas

There is a new DOI translator that is almost ready to be released to the general public. It should significantly speed things up and possibly allow you to retrieve more articles.

BUT....

It will not solve your problem, because as I said before retrieving all the metadata happens before you even get the list of items to select from.

You did not mention anything about errors popping up, so I will assume you are not getting any.

What operating system and version of Zotero are you running (also is it standalone or Firefox plug-in)?

If Zotero is in fact behaving the way you describe (i.e. you see the list, select an item, and the item takes a long time to import), could you enable debugging, perform the same actions you described above, and submit the debug report to Zotero servers? Then post the Debug ID in this thread.