"refresh reference" function (for ASAP articles)

Would it be possible to include a function to "refresh" a reference, i.e. to get again e.g. volume, issue, pages in case a paper has been added to Zotero before publication ("early view" / "ASAP")? That would be quite helpful.
  • To make sure I understand what your asking. You would like to select an item, right click, and chose "refresh reference". Then Zotero would go back to the site you grabbed the reference from and replace your local data with the current data for that article?

    One thought, if you have an attached PDF you could detach the PDF from the metadata right click on the PDF and select "Retrieve Metadata for PDF" to get the data from Google Scholar. (You need Zotero 1.5 to use the retrieve Metadata function.)

    Are other folks interested in this sort of thing?
  • Yes, in order to add page numbers, vol, issue that are missing in these early view papers.
    To be up-to-date I'm using newsfeeds of journals that show articles in advance of printing, so part of the bibliographic information is missing when I add them to my library once I've come across some interesting papers.
    So one has to go back to the articles' pages later on in order to get it, otherwise the papers can not be cited correctly. The preliminary PDFs neither contain that information.
    (If the bibliographic data is refreshed, it could be good not to delete all old attachments, e.g. in case of supporting information that had been added manually.)
    Just some idea, don't know either if other people might find that useful..
  • edited January 27, 2009
    It would be nice to have. In most cases the PDF will have to be updated as well though (early online copies often lack official layout, volume/issue numbering and sometimes bear watermarks).

    A way to clearly identify these preliminary sources would be a great first step though. Maybe a status field could clear the way (hint hint: http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/5439/question-local-extensions-to-schema/?Focus=23824#Comment_23824). As long as these papers have a DOI attached, it would be fairly easy to automate the process of redownloading the metadata and PDFs for online but not yet final copies of papers.
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