Wrong Year of publication in citation

ldgff

Hi. It happened to me a couple of times that a paper was published at the end of the year with the number of next year. For example, a paper published on date 2014-12-18 was labeled 2015.1(Vol).8(Page).

But when I save the ref, zotero will record the actual date of publication (2014-12-18). So when I cite it, it will appear to be 2014. 1. 8.

Is there a way to fix it to show the right year? So far I can only manually change the date of publication to 2015

Thanks in advance.

adamsmith

we'd have to know where you're importing from (the URL) -- I wouldn't be terribly optimistic, as we usually just get the date from the publisher, be we could at least take a look.

ldgff

Here is one example. I will keep an eye on the date when recording ref. Thx~

http://pubs.rsc.org/en/Content/ArticleLanding/2015/EE/C4EE02144D#!divAbstract

Energy Environ. Sci., 2015,8, 258-266

DOI: 10.1039/C4EE02144D
Received 10 Jul 2014, Accepted 12 Sep 2014
First published online 12 Sep 2014

adamsmith

nothing we can do very easily at least:
<meta name="citation_online_date" content="2014-09-12" />
<meta name="citation_publication_date" content="2014-12-18" />

note how Zotero is not importing the online date but the publication date from the page, which really should correspond to the print publication. I don't know why RSC has the 2014 date in there. They do have the correct data in the other reference formats offered on their page.

ldgff

Ok. I think it is common for journals to publish ahead of time, just like you can buy 2016 cars now. Thanks for the reply anyways. Have a good one.

DWL-SDCA

Write to the editor of the journal and explain that the publisher isn't changing the publication date when it moves from ePub ahead of print to the print version.

If nothing else, it is in the publisher's interest because correct citations are needed for raising the Impact Factor.

This was a regular problem with several Wiley journals (those that came from Blackwell) and some from Springerlink. I think that Sebastian (adamsmith) was able to fix those by using other metadata sources (I guess RIS or BibTeX).

Despite that Zotero success, I contacted several journal editors I know and also the publisher's offices responsible for the abstracting and indexing database feeds. I received thank you replies. It appears that those publishers are now updating the pub year when the print version is assembled.

Writing to the editor at his or her university address with a copy to the journal address can be productive. That way both the editor and the managing editors both get the message.

Apologies for typos: I'm writing on my iPad and it updated to iOS 9. The "keyboard" behavior is now quite different than before.

adamsmith

this is different though -- they don't use the ePub date (which, as per above, they list separately), but a separate publication date--my guess would be the date the print journal is actually issued?

DWL-SDCA

The default Springer-Link Zotero translator still imports the publication date as the online publication date rather than the print publication date. Thus, the imported publication date is out-of-sync with the volume-issue information. (Although, I admit that sometimes the ePub year and the Print Pub year are the same.)

The Save to Zotero using DOI gets the correct date but omits the abstract.

The save using embedded metadata provides the online date instead of the print publication date and omits the abstract.

If I click on the Springer option to export and select the RIS option provides the correct date but omits the abstract.

The contents of the import modes listed above do not differ inside or outside my university proxy.

Here is one DOI with the problem:
10.1007/s12310-013-9115-3

I can provide many examples from this and other journals if needed.

This issue isn't unique to this Springer journal. I have had to edit about half of the imported article dates from Springer journals.

Is is feasible to have the translator gather metadata from more than one source so that we get both the correct publication date and the abstract?

Thanks beforehand.

adamsmith

as I say, though, the problem is trickier than that:
Here's the metadata:
<meta name="citation_online_date" content="2014-09-12" />
<meta name="citation_publication_date" content="2014-12-18" />

So there are in fact three dates:
1. The online publication date 2014-9-12
2. The publication date of the journal issue 2014-12-18
3. The publication year associated with the volume/issue: 2015

We currently grab the 2nd one. We'd need the third one. Sure it's possible to get this from the RIS or bibtex, but pulling these down, testing&merging is quite a lot of work and rather messy.

edit: sorry, misunderstood that. That was about RSC above. Springer is a different issue.

adamsmith

Springer actually has
<meta name="citation_cover_date" content="2014/06/01"/>
we can work with that.

nickbart

Just pinging: It seems this hasn’t been fixed yet for Springer journals?!

jperryhouts

This is not a fix, or even very well written, but here's a small script to iterate through your library and check entries against crossref.org. It's an easy way to at least see which entries *might* be incorrect, so you can update them manually.

It treats the zotero database as readonly, so even if it doesn't work with future database schema changes, at least it won't break anything. If you give it a `-m email_address` flag, it will use crossref's priority servers.

You can get the script from https://gist.github.com/jperryhouts/353b705707c9dce6f7fcef007ef5af78