author et al. year...?

villaromero

Hi,
I write using Apache OpenOffice 4.0.1 and want to use Zotero to insert citations as I write. Regardless of the style I pick in the STYLE MANAGER my "citation" is the TITLE of the cited paper in Zotero's MY LIBRARY. If so, I will have to change the TITLE of each paper in MY LIBRARY to -author et al. year- or -author & author et al. year- which would defeat the purpose of trying to use a tool to avoid entering -author et al. year- in my paper as I write. Besides it would make navigating MY LIBRARY a giant headache as is the title of the paper that rings a bell in my memory.

My question, if I want to add:

-author et al. year- or -author & author et al. year-

as my citation, what should I do?

All the papers in MY LIBRARY are indexed, pdftotext version 3.02 is installed and I just created my zotero.org account.

Many thanks for any information.

JF

adamsmith

it sounds like you just have PDFs in Zotero rather than PDFs attached to items (which would then hold the citation data). What do you see in the right-hand pane? How did you get your items in Zotero in the first place?

villaromero

Right hand pane shows:

TEXT= the exact TITLE of my PDF in MY LIBRARY
FILENAME: the exact TITLE of my PDF in MY LIBRARY
PAGES: a number
MODIFIED: date, time
INDEXED: Yes, recycle green arrow
RELATED: [click here]
TAGS: [click here]

I dragged my papers from a folder in my laptop into MY LIBRARY.

"you just have PDFs in Zotero rather than PDFs attached to items (which would then hold the citation data)" - What does this mean?

Thanks for the quick response!

adamsmith

This should help you make sense of this:
http://libguides.northwestern.edu/c.php?g=114874&p=750362

villaromero

I am RETRIEVING METADATA FOR PDF (right clicking over the paper TITLE).
Will it make a difference?
Will report...

villaromero

Thanks adamsmith but the problem persists.
I will have to manually enter bibliographic information for a couple of the papers in MY LIBRARY, but when writing my manuscript, the "citation" inserted in the manuscript is the PDF-filename of the CITATION file. This also occurs when generating a bibliography.

Ideally, I would add a Zotero reference as I write (inserted as -author et al., year) and then have this citation added to the bibliography. Then I can switch citation styles based on where I want to submit...

Do I have to locate each PDF in MY LIBRARY online again to add it from Zotero's interface?

adamsmith

If you cite one of the papers for which you have either successfully retrieved metadata or manually input data, you'll get correctly formatted citations that behave exactly as you describe/want.

fbennett

@villaromero: It sounds like the "Retrieve metadata for PDF" operation just failed for those missing items. You need to create a Zotero item for each one, and attach the PDF to it.

The simplest way to do it, if "Retrieve metadata for PDF" fails, is to use "Create Parent Item" (immediately below it in the same menu). Once you have created the item, fill in the missing details, and you're done.

Be sure to change those references in your document, so that they use the Zotero item. A cite to a bare PDF will always look wrong.

villaromero

Hi all,
Thank you for your time. All attempts utterly worthless, enormous waste of time. This worked (FIREFOX 32.0.2 MAC OSX 10.9.5):
1. Moved all items in MY LIBRARY to the TRASH from FIREFOX's ZOTERO window
2. In my manuscript: used NATURE citing style and generated bibliography (this is easy to read: citations are entered as a number that corresponds to the number in the bibliography).
3. Printed bibliography on paper
4. Starting at the beginning of my manuscript and using the bibliography I printed, I manually located every reference in FIREFOX and individually added each reference to MY LIBRARY using ZOTERO's SAVE TO ZOTERO icon on the right end of FIREFOX's address bar. Then I could add each reference to my reviewed manuscript as I read it. This was OK because I have to read and reread my manuscript many times but I could see ZOTERO losing a lot of users because of this (sorry, the "documentation" tab at ZOTERO.ORG was utterly useless and actually led to more confusion)
5. Done, at the end of 20 minutes I reviewed my manuscript, made some amendments and added both references and bibliography for ~60 references to my manuscript from properly introduced items in MY LIBRARY.

It was actually a nice exercise because I found a couple of very recent and relevant papers.

Bottomline, you can lose your sanity trying to fix every item in your Zotero library individually (as in RETRIEVE METADATA FOR PDF -it did not fix my problem trying to get/switch between citation styles). Or you can trash your library and start properly from scratch in point 2 above, while you brush your writing reviewing your manuscript and manually adding references to your Zotero library from Firefox using a printed copy of your bibliography.

Worked for me...

aurimas

There are some things that Zotero can do to reduce the confusion (like not allowing to cite PDFs in the classic view, which is, however, mostly deprecated and is not the default method of entering citations. By default, you cannot cite PDFs), but your issue is far from representative of what most users experience.

located every reference in FIREFOX and individually added each reference to MY LIBRARY using ZOTERO's SAVE TO ZOTERO icon on the right end of FIREFOX's address bar

This is what most users do to begin with and this is how Zotero is meant to function. Yes, there are definitely cases where users start off from bare PDFs on their computer (like yourself) and then importing them into Zotero _and_ going through the "Retrieve Metadata" step is the way to go. The reason this didn't work for you is because you had already cited the PDFs directly in your paper and would have to remove and re-insert the references (to Zotero items, not PDFs) after retrieving metadata. Trashing all of your references and re-importing was not necessary.

sorry, the "documentation" tab at ZOTERO.ORG was utterly useless and actually led to more confusion

IMO, https://www.zotero.org/support/quick_start_guide while a bit outdated, makes general usage of Zotero fairly clear. If you have suggestions on how to improve the guide, we're always listening.

villaromero

@aurimas

Thank you for the note. As I said, my method would definitely be unorthodox but worked for me after trying unsuccessfully to RETRIEVE METADATA for each item in MY LIBRARY. Because my manuscript was short it was not a big issue to add my references using a printed copy as I reviewed the latest manuscript version. In any case, I think I have a good grip on ZOTERO's operation. Perhaps highlighting things NOT TO DO would get new users on board faster and more efficiently...
Thank you for the reference to the quick start guide, will definitely start there next time.

Anyway of wrapping this up as "SOLVED" so we can move on and new users can avoid making the same mistakes I made?

Cheers!