Add an "Abstract" category

Shahar

The drop down list for type of captured page under Info contains many different useful categories, however it is missing "abstract". Right now I'm using the category of "Journal article" instead, but it is not eacatly accurate. Would it be possible to add a category named "Abstract" ?
Thanks, Shahar

adamsmith

you are aware that pretty much all categories have an abstract field?
Where are those abstracts? If they are in a collection of abstracts that's a periodical, yes, store it as a journal, there really is no downside.
If you want to distinguish them from other journal articles, how about an "abstract" tag?
Different categories are really just necessary if things are potentially going to be cited according to different rules, which I don't think exist for abstracts.

noksagt

Different categories are really just necessary if things are potentially going to be cited according to different rules, which I don't think exist for abstracts.

In another thread, someone remarked that one style required '[abstract]' to be appended to the titles in citations. I don't know if there are others that specify appending or prepending something else, but I wouldn't be surprised.

bdarcus

Yeah, scientific "abstracts" are not the same "abstracts" as we're typically used to. But I'd like to know, in those styles that noksagt mention that require the article type after the title, does that hold for other similar types (editorials, reviews, etc.)? That might suggest a different way to encode that data.

Shahar

There are actually journals (at least in my field, Anesthesiology), who will not allow older abstracts (more than 3 years, I think) to be cited, the rational being that by that time a peer-reviewed full article should have been published.
In anycase, many abstracts are downloaded from meetings websites and have not been published in journals. It would be misleading to label them as "journal article".
Shahar

erazlogo

zotero has two types for paper abstracts: conference paper, for papers published in proceedings; and presentation, for conference papers that were not published.

noksagt

@Shahar: Can't you enter them as documents and tag them as an abstract for your use case?

@erazlogo: While it is true that abstracts are often (though not always) used for material presented at conferences, I don't think that the types you describe are suitable replacements. Conference papers/proceedings and abstracts are not the same thing at all & that type would be no more suitable than book section or journal article. The presentation type is intended to refer to an actual presentation, not a printed abstract that is associated with it (and it has fields that describe where/when that presentation was, but nothing to help someone else locate an abstract).

adamsmith

OK - I'm confused - could someone post a sample citation for an abstract?

noksagt

It varies by style. The style listed in the other thread on this subject was APA. Here's an example, culled from Loyola:

Fuqua, B. H. (1999). Young children's decisions about naughtiness and punishment in constructivist classrooms [Abstract]. Abstract obtained from Proquest: Dissertation Abstracts International, UMI No. 9920203.

(Note that this was judiciously chosen to also serve as an abstract that had nothing to do with a conference, but for a dissertation.)

vschmidt

I am stumped with the same issue that Shahar was above.

I would like to cite this abstract:
http://scitation.aip.org/getabs/servlet/GetabsServlet?prog=normal&id=JASMAN000120000005003012000003&idtype=cvips&gifs=yes

When Zotero captures this information it categorizes it as a journal article (which I think is incorrect), and an export to a citation style produces results that are being rejected by my editor.

Here is how it was suggested that this this abstract be cited:


M. J. Noad, R. Dunlop, D. H. Cato, D. Stokes, P. Miller, and N. Biassoni,
"Humpback whale social sounds: Sources levels and response to playback," J.
Acoust. Soc. Am. 120, 3012 (2006) (A)

OR

M. J. Noad, R. Dunlop, D. H. Cato, D. Stokes, P. Miller, and N. Biassoni,
"Humpback whale social sounds: Sources levels and response to playback," J.
Acoust. Soc. Am. 120, 3012(A) (2006)

It seems to me that although I can tag this is an abstract in Zotero as suggested above, it won't change the way Zotero formats the bibliographic citation or how it is exported in bibtex.

So I agree with Shahar, that Zotero needs an "abstract" category, unless someone can suggest a better way.

noksagt

When Zotero captures this information it categorizes it as a journal article (which I think is incorrect)

Zotero's doing the right thing: Scitation types this as a journal article in RIS and BibTeX export. Indeed, it appeared inside of a journal!

Here is how it was suggested that this this abstract be cited:

Is this suggestion any more than editorial whim? In other words: are there author instructions that explicitly state this to all who might submit to this journal?

it won't change the way Zotero formats the bibliographic citation or how it is exported in bibtex.

BibTeX does not have a commonly used 'abstract' type.

CLARIAH-MediaSuite

Dear Zotero team: are you planning to include the "Abstract" type in Zotero 5.1? This is a distinctive type in Digital humanities conferences as well. Thank you, Liliana

adamsmith

There are currently no plans for this as far as I know.

bwiernik

These are best stored, in my opinion, as journal articles with `Medium: Abstract` in the Extra field (or a future dedicated format/type field).