Website reference Export to bibtex

nkampy

Ok, I'm trying to use Zotero to export the references to a bibtex file so that I can integrate it into my LaTex document. Things work great with pretty standardized items, but I have found at least one major problem with the process.

When using a website reference Zotero builds the following bibtex .bib file entry:

@misc{unknown_f_2012,
title = {F Herbert Bormann, Helped Discover Acid Rain, Dies at 90},
url = {http://environment.yale.edu/news/article/f-herbert-bormann-helped-discover-acid-rain-dies-at-90/},
urldate = {2015-02-02},
author = {unknown, unknown},
month = jun,
year = {2012},
file = {F. Herbert Bormann, Helped Discover Acid Rain, Dies at 90:/Users/nkampy/Library/Application Support/Zotero/Profiles/f12p038d.default/zotero/storage/F4WXWANZ/f-herbert-bormann-helped-discover-acid-rain-dies-at-90.html:text/html}
}

The problem is that this is non-standard use of fields for an @misc bib entry:

@misc{Xmisc,
%author = "",
%title = "",
%howpublished = "",
%year = "XXXX",
%month = "",
%note = "",
}

copied from:

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Bibliography_Management

How can I adjust the rules that zotero uses to generate the bibtex file or some other way of generating a bibtex compliant bib file?

adamsmith

bibtex should ignore any field that is not required or optional. If it doesn't, something would appear wrong with your bibtex set-up.
(see e.g. http://nwalsh.com/tex/texhelp/bibtx-7.html)

The Zotero bibtex export is written with that in mind; that's why you get fields like file and keyword, which are pretty much never used in citations. As for url and urldate over howpublished, IIRC there are some longer discussion on why we do this that you can find on the forums. Note that the idea that there is a single "standard" bibtex is unfortunately incorrect. That's part of the problem with bibtex and one of the rationales behind biblatex.

adamsmith

(though FWIW, bibtex export is handled in a javascript file in the translators folder in the zotero data directory, so if you want to, you can modify it at will:
https://www.zotero.org/support/zotero_data )

nkampy

adamsmith,

Thanks for the fast reply. Rather than assuming that I need to do surgery on Zotero. What is the proper way to get website references to display correctly in a LaTex document? What versions of LaTex is Zotero made to work with out of the box. I'm running Texmaker and Texshop (both latest versions) on my Mac OSX 10.9.5.

I only know how to use the url usepackage and either the note field or the how published fields which both don't seem to be supported by Zotero out of the box.

BTW biblatex with @online does not display websites correctly either.....

nkampy

@online{unknown_f_2012,
title = {F Herbert Bormann, Helped Discover Acid Rain, Dies at 90},
url = {http://environment.yale.edu/news/article/f-herbert-bormann-helped-discover-acid-rain-dies-at-90/},
author = {unknown, unknown},
urldate = {2015-02-02},
date = {2012-06-09},
file = {F. Herbert Bormann, Helped Discover Acid Rain, Dies at 90:/Users/nkampy/Library/Application Support/Zotero/Profiles/f12p038d.default/zotero/storage/F4WXWANZ/f-herbert-bormann-helped-discover-acid-rain-dies-at-90.html:text/html}
}

adamsmith

that looks fine for biblatex -- what would be the problem there?
(Required fields:
author/editor, title,year/date,url
Optional fields:
subtitle,titleaddon,language,version,note,organization,date,month,year,addendum, pubstate,urldate)

As for bibtex - unless bibtex throws an error, the issue is your .bst, not your setup (as I say, bibtex should ignore everything that's not optional or required). My understanding is that the handling of URLs is all over the place in existing bibtex styles--even more so if you also want an access date. There are tools you can use to add url support to bst styles (e.g. http://www.ctan.org/pkg/urlbst)