problem "importing" citations

janew1

I am having trouble getting citations semi-manually into Zotero.

For works that where there is a little picture of a book in the address bar, no problem. But if there's only a document icon, I often fail at getting the citation into my library.

I believe this is what "translators" do, but I have consistently had problems with the electronic versions of the Sage handbooks in the social sciences. When I click on the Zotero icon in the address bar, I get a message saying there is a translator error. Hovering over the icon, it says "Save to Zotero (DOI)."

I guess there can't be translators for everything, but when I go to "export citations" on the page, I can't get that to work, either. I get one choice to export to Zotero, but if I choose "open file with Zotero.exe" all that does is give the Zotero window the focus. Nothing else happens.

If I choose to save the file, and drag it onto "My Library", I get a new collection called "export.ris" with a generic document with the title "export.ris" and nothing else.

This is also what happens if I choose to export the file in BibTex format. If I choose to open the BibTex file with Zotero, I just get an untitled blank document.

Since the automatic citation machinery almost always works, I haven't had this problem a lot. But I would appreciate some help with it, if there's a way to avoid creating the parent items by hand.

Here's the URL (but I've had troubles with others, too). I have tried both Zotero stand-alone and the Firefox extension, with the same results. I'm on a PC running Windows 7, and my Zotero versions are current.

http://knowledge.sagepub.com.proxy.lib.sfu.ca/view/hdbk_sociolinguistics/SAGE.xml

adamsmith

tl;dr: technical details between ~~~ quick solution below

~~~~~~
OK, some quick background:
Zotero does two things to display an item in the URL bar:
- it first checks whether it "knows" the site (that's what we call a "dedicated translator"). That's not the case for the Sage Handbooks
- then it check through a couple of generic options that may be available even where it doesn't know the page. The most common ones you'll see are "DOI" (it checks for a DOI on the page and looks the data up on CrossRef) and "Embedded Metadata" (it looks for data the publisher embedded in the header of the html/webpage.

In the case of Sage there is a DOI and there is in fact data at CrossRef, but Zotero doesn't properly understand that. We'll fix that. However, that will only capture, in this case, the info for the entire book, not for individual chapters (if you check, the DOI is the same for all chapters as you click through).

So now you want to use the "export citation" feature.
In many cases, as long as you're using the Firefox version only (with Standalone closed), Zotero will actually automatically open and import files intended for Endnote and similar software. However, that requires that the site marks the properly, "serves them with the right content-header" in tech-speak. Again, that's not the case here, so you'll have to do a little bit more.


~~~~~
Here's the best current solution on this page:
Download the citation in "Bibtex" format (which in this case has the best data). Open it with a text editor like Notepad. Select all (ctrl+a) and copy (ctrl+c). Then go to Zotero and select "import from Clipboard" under the gears menu. The item data will import correctly.

janew1

Thank you, and thank you for replying so quickly, but it doesn't work! I just get a new "book section" document, with absolutely nothing in it except entries for "date added" and "date modified." I tried both stand-alone and FF extensions; same thing.

FYI, Here's what's in the Bibtex file for one of the chapters:

@INBOOK{_hdbk_sociolinguistics_n24.xml},
booktitle = "The SAGE Handbook of Sociolinguistics",
title = "Doctor-Patient Communication",
editor = "Ruth Wodak, Barbara Johnstone, Paul Kerswill",
author = "Florian Menz",
publisher = "SAGE Publications Ltd",
edition = "0",
year = "2011",
pages = "330-345",
doi = "http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781446200957",
url = "http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781446200957",
}

adamsmith

that's because they're idiots ;).
This should be:

@INBOOK{_hdbk_sociolinguistics_n24.xml,
booktitle = "The SAGE Handbook of Sociolinguistics",
title = "Doctor-Patient Communication",
editor = "Ruth Wodak, Barbara Johnstone, Paul Kerswill",
author = "Florian Menz",
publisher = "SAGE Publications Ltd",
edition = "0",
year = "2011",
pages = "330-345",
doi = "http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781446200957",
url = "http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781446200957",
}

(just to be clear "they" is Sage here)

janew1

You know, I saw that, the extra right bracket, but I thought, no, what do I know, that's got to be okay. But thank you! That definitely works now.

Out of curiosity, I just checked a couple of their other online research handbooks, and they have the same error. I sent them an e-mail. Maybe they'll offer me a job ;) Oh, and thanks for clarifying the ID of the idiots!

adamsmith

(btw. the editors are also incorrectly entered, which is why you see them all in one line in Zotero. That should be
editor = "Wodak, Ruth and Johnstone, Barbara and Kerswill, Paul",
that whole page is rather frustrating..)

janew1

Curious... I've now e-mailed them on that, too, and linked to this page. I'll post the results here (should there be any). (Maybe they'll offer _you_ a job.)

adamsmith

Well, if anyone from Sage does end up here--don't take the "idiots" personally: it was a frustrating half hour with that webpage, with nothing working as it should (RIS served with wrong content header, no DOIs for individual chapters, the data deposited with CrossRef for the Handbook being sub-standard, then the issues with bibtex...)

janew1

Oops; sorry. But then we'll assume that the savvy devs in this world are following these boards anyway ;)

aurimas

I emailed over a week ago about another issue https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/39995/sage-journals-dont-import-subtitles-properly/ Got a response today for clarification, so I asked them to look at this thread as well. Maybe it will speed things up.

janew1

In case anybody's still curious, Sage hasn't fixed this (and neither have I heard back from them FWIW).

janew1

Update -- still not :(