Journals as objects?

hjansen

Zotero supports a large number of item types for the bibliographic records. However, I could not find a type like "journal" or "serial". But we do have databases in our metasearch engine which reference just electronic journals (not the articles, just the journals themselves). Which item type am I supposed to use for this kind of records when writing a site translator?

Heiko

erazlogo

There is a ticket for this, but it's not clear when/whether this will happen. For now, I use book item type and put "serial" in abstract. You can then search for [item type=book and abstract=serial] to find all serials.

hjansen

That's ugly. Especially because there sometimes is other information to put in the abstract field. But on the other hand it seems there is no clean alternative solution right now.

I was really astonished to find out that no item type "periodical" (or "serial" or "journal") is currently available, because I don't believe that to be an exotic need?!

I do hope your suggestions in the ticket are are embraced and implemented soon!

bdarcus

It may not be "exotic" and seems rather obvious, but OTOH, what other options support it?

hjansen

Don't really understand what you're trying to say. Yes, BibTeX does not provide a "periodical" type either. But does that matter?
I'd like to be able to gather information on journals relevant to my interests. Maybe as a librarian I've a different point of view than other people, but for me that'd be useful.
So I believe that a) I've every right to suggest support for this kind of "item" and b) the developers of Zotero have every right to decline my request...
(The only thing I expect is, that - in case it's declined - the decline comes with an explanation beyond "Hey, others don't do that either" ;-)
And in case you felt insulted by the word "ugly" - that's not about Zotero. Being a librarian every misuse of metadata fields looks ugly to me and screams for a cleaner solution.

bdarcus

I'm trying to say: I totally agree with your request. Indeed, I've spent more than a year working on an independent data model that I expect Zotero will be using that includes periodicals as full class objects, along with a lot of other things (events, collections, etc.).

I was just suggesting that saying you're "astonished" to not see this feature when no other similar applications have it seems a bit much.

hjansen

Excessive expectations perhaps ;-)

Can you make any forecast about when Zotero will start using your revised data model?

bdarcus

I can't really, except to say that the first release of the model is out, and the Zotero people have been involve in its development. I wouldn't be surprised to see it, say, when 2.0 is released.

But I don't speak for Zotero, and so don't really know.