behavior if a reference is replaced in the bibliography

parrenin
This discussion concerns the behavior of Zotero when a reference which has been cited in a LO document is replaced in the database.
Currently, when refreshing the bibliography in the LO document, Zotero use the former reference which has been stored in the document and does not propose to copy this reference in the database.
It would be nice to propose to:
- either copy the former reference to the database
- or to use the new reference
  • adamsmith
    I don't know what you mean by "replace" - there is no "replace" function in Zotero so it wouldn't know which the new reference replacing the old one was - but if you update citation information in Zotero, the document _does_ update with that information.
  • parrenin
    Imagine you have entered the reference "by hand", and then you remove this reference and import it using scholar.google.com.
    Zotero will not detect that the new citation is similar to the old one and propose to use it.
    Mendeley does have such a behavior, you can test.
  • adamsmith
    I guess it'd be possible to automatically search the library for a similar reference when the original is missing. But I'm not sure how desirable that is: it'd make collaboration a lot messier if you'd be prompted for all the (non-group) items inserted by another user. My guess would be that this is the likelier scenario and so it makes more sense to leave things as they are.
  • parrenin
    An option to desactivate this proposed feature would allow for easy collaboration.
  • adamsmith
    yeah, not convinced. Too many options make for bad software.

    The way to handle the case you describe is to add the item from google scholar and then merge the two rather than to delete the original one. That's what the duplicate feature is for.
  • parrenin
    Your solution does one part of the problem, although it is not clear how the merge feature works (when fields are different, which one is chosen?)
    It would be also interesting to have the other aspect, ie importing into the database references which are in a .doc or .odt file.
  • adamsmith
    edited May 17, 2013
    It would be also interesting to have the other aspect, ie importing into the database references which are in a .doc or .odt file.
    that's planned, though I'm not sure how exactly it will be implemented.

    Try out the duplicate merge feature - it lets you choose one version as the basis and then allows you to merge individual fields as you want.
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