RIS files from Scopus

librarianlea

Hi,

Has anyone been able to successfully export a list of references from Scopus in RIS format, then import them into Zotero?

In Firefox and in Zotero Standalone, when I go to Preferences - Import and try to import my scopus.ris file, I get the message "The selected file is not in a supported format."

BTW, the Zotero folder icon in the web address bar does a great job of gathering lists of references from Scopus.

This is for an off-label use.

One of my researchers wants to import the bibliographies from his own publications into Zotero. Since Scopus often provides source lists, we thought we'd bring up a Scopus record for this person's publication, then use Zotero to create records from his bibliography there.

Scopus gives an option to export the bibliography/source list in RIS format, but I can't get Zotero standalone or Zotero firefox to recognize the file.

EndNote X6 recognize the file from Scopus, so this could be done by importing the ris file to EndNote, then importing the EndNote ris file into Zotero.

We don't have the staff time to provide this service and I doubt the researcher would go through these steps, so I wondered if there's a simple fix.

Thanks for providing this product, it's cool!

adamsmith

paste the file in question to gist.github.com create a public gist and post the link here. We'll take a look.

librarianlea

Got it! https://gist.github.com/librarianlea/ee8a425b572374a4c497.js

Though you might want to disregard the file. I was able to get the Scopus bibliography into Zotero in Bibtex format.

Very sorry to have taken your time! Thank you for the fast response!

adamsmith

edit: see aurimas and zuphilip below. I was looking at a wrong version of the file.

If you're happy with what you were able to do with bibtex, though, there's no need. Since, as you say, Scopus works nicely with the URL bar icon, this isn't something I'm terribly concerned with.

zuphilip

There seems to be no TY tag in that messy RIS data and the specification of RIS is clearly on that.

aurimas

Well, the data is not that messy. That link just leads to some odd javascript display. here's the actual gist https://gist.github.com/librarianlea/ee8a425b572374a4c497 But yes, it's missing TY tags, which we actually so compensate for during translation, I believe, but it just fails to detect. Not sure if we should make our translator smarter to compensate for it during detection as well (maybe if it finds several lines that look like RIS tags, it should assume it's RIS)

aurimas

@adamsmith, you have some contact on Scopus, right? Could you let them know about the missing TY and get them to fix it on their end?

adamsmith

I'll report this to Scopus. I have a direct contact there.
I'm concerned about messing with RIS--are we sure we'd not mis-detect things?

librarianlea

Thanks all!!

I'm not up on coding or programming, so can't actually parse what I posted.

The Bibtext export looks good to me, after a few imports and looks at a bibliography created from them in MS Word.

I'm talking with the researcher and other beginner Zotero users about this, seems to be going well so far.

aurimas

I'm concerned about messing with RIS--are we sure we'd not mis-detect things?

Yes, I'd rather not mess with it, but I think we can make the detection fairly accurate if we have to.

adamsmith

update from Scopus:
"I checked it out and this is indeed a defect. I’ve submitted this to my dev team and put it high on their priority list. I can’t say when this will be resolved exactly but I’m hoping within next 2 weeks.
The RIS tag issue is only applicable for the Document Details reference list export. The Search Result page RIS export file does contain the TY tag."

So we can thankfully leave this alone on our side.