Support for Master's Thesis Type and full Bibtex format

kiselev

Gents,

1.
I imported my bibtex collection into Zotero and realized that Zotero does into distinguish between Master's and PhD Thesis types of documents.

So if you import bibtex to Zotero and export it back from Zotero - the results are different !

2.
Please provide full support for Bibtex documents - it is the major format of references, and if Zoreto does not fully support Bibtex - it is really hard to use it. All other features (like synch and indexing) are cool but still secondary - if you do not support major things Zotero is not going to be used for serious purposes !

I cannot export Zotero collections to Bibtex since all files, links, notes do not properly represented in Bibtex format (@misc with ???).

Please create another tab called "Bibtex" where the user will be able to change everything one wants. When exporting a record to Bibtex - if something a certain property is not empty in Bibtex description - simply use it from the "Bibtex tab".

Very simpy and powerfull !

I would like to use Zotero as my primary reference manager but due to not full support of Bibtex I cannot use it. So I have to use Bibsonomy and Biblioscape.

3.
Please also take a look how categories are represented in Biblioscape GUI - a tree of checkboxes - it is a very convenient representation for managing tags or categories.

Thanks you !

noksagt

I imported my bibtex collection into Zotero and realized that Zotero does into distinguish between Master's and PhD Thesis types of documents.

There are a half dozen thesis types in addition to these two. What benefit would having multiple thesis types bring? Theses are cited the same, regardless of type.

Re. 2: There's no reason to duplicate requests across multiple threads.

I use BibTeX. While I have a number of improvements that I'd like to see with BibTeX support, I do not know if I agree that Zotero should force a BibTeX tab onto all users.

Note that BibTeX has no standard way of representing user files, notes, or URLs (and the representation of multiple numbers of any of these for a single item is even less standard). Furthermore, note that none of these are typically used by the 'bibtex' program to typeset your citations. A single URL is now used in some styles, but that is about it. There are still a few limitations in using Zotero-exported BibTeX in document preparation, but I suspect the only limitations that you've run into are in trying to use it as a data-exchange format (where it has many limitations anyway).

You might give JabRef a try if you want a dedicated BibTeX manager, which Zotero will (hopefully) never be. (And I say this having just had a LaTeX manuscript accepted where I had used Zotero-produced BibTeX for most references.)

kiselev

1. Different Thesis types are cited differently: @MastersThesis{
2. Regarding Zotero notes and files entries when exported to BibTeX:
1) there should be at least correct representation of them in Bibtex (without ???) - so it will be possible to correct those entries in JabRef. Now you cannot open those entries there.
2) Now to exclude those entries when exporting to Bibtex I have to tag them with a special tag "extra" and put this condition in Search - not very smart !

Anyway Bibtex tab would make life easier for me and I believe for others - it is a standard way for representing references. I believe that Zotero still will be primarily used by those who knows what Bibtex is.
Those who does not need this tab - not gonna use it.

Thanks !

noksagt

Please also take a look how categories are represented in Biblioscape GUI - a tree of checkboxes - it is a very convenient representation for managing tags or categories.

I found a screenshot. It is interesting, but I don't know if this scales well for lots of tags. Zotero does not yet do hierarchical tags (it has been requested, but there is little consensus). I like the current del.icio.us-like behavior (with tag clouds, auto-completion of typed tags, auto-bundling of tags, etc.).

kiselev

Biblioscape supports hierarchies of categories which can be though as collections but not tags in Zotero.
Bibsonomy supports hierarchy of tags as syntax, but lacks of proper graphical representations of those hierarchies.

I like Zotero for good usability, but would like to have some freedom with Bibtex - there is nothing bad for Zotero to be a good Bibtex tool as well!

Thanks !

noksagt

1. Different Thesis types are cited differently: @MastersThesis{

Can you show me a formatted bibliography where different thesis types are formatted differently? The BibTeX types @mastersthesis and @phdthesis use the same fields. If the only concern is being able to preserve thesis type between import and export, there may be a better way to do this than adding more types to zotero.

Anyway Bibtex tab would make life easier for me and I believe for others - it is a standard way for representing references.

"The nicest thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from." Again, I'm a heavy BibTex user. But the majority of Zotero users probably are not & the majority of documents produced by Zotero probably do not use the BibTeX features. So, I question if it should be in the core extension.

Those who does not need this tab - not gonna use it.

Again, I might actually use a feature like this. However, many whom I collaborate wit would not and they would be confused and afraid of an interface that presented this.

This actually seems like it could be the basis of a good extension to zotero: attach a specially-formatted note to references containing information in BibTeX & a nice way of viewing that information.

Thanks !

bdarcus

@kiselev:

Anyway Bibtex tab would make life easier for me and I believe for others - it is a standard way for representing references. I believe that Zotero still will be primarily used by those who knows what Bibtex is.

As noksagt points out, this isn't in the least bit true. I'm probably in a small minority of people here who have ever used BIbTeX (and I generally hate it, BTW), much less that regularly use it. It is not THE major format. Certainly obvious bugs in BibTeX export should be fixed, but that's quite enough thank you.

Oh, and I'm not generally impressed with hierarchical tags either.

madpower

Hi!

> Can you show me a formatted bibliography where different thesis types are formatted differently?
Please, have a look at
http://www.ads.tuwien.ac.at/publications/bib/pdf/prandtstetter-PhD-09.pdf
You will see in the References at the end of the document that there are master's theses and phd theses differentiated through the words "master's thesis" and "phd thesis". BTW: these are set automatically by BibTeX and not inserted by the user!!!

With respect to BibTeX: There are sciences where BibTeX and LaTeX is the standard - mainly computer sciences and all other sciences incorporating a lot of formulas in papers. So please, do not say that only a negligible mass of
people uses BibTeX. BTW: Large publisher as Springer and Elsevier support LaTeX and BibTeX with their own style files making the complete publishing process much easier.

br,
Matthias

ajlyon

You will see in the References at the end of the document that there are master's theses and phd theses differentiated through the words "master's thesis" and "phd thesis".

Hence the "Type" field in Thesis items. In light of the very large number of types of theses across the world, it's just not realistic to create distinct thesis types for each and every form of thesis. If you're having trouble getting a thesis citation to be formatted correctly, that should be fixed-- one option could be adding support for creating distinct @mastersthesis and @phdthesis types export, but that would force the BibTeX export translator to parse the Type field... Really, I think that it's a bug that BibTeX models these as distinct fields-- there are far too many types of theses, and they're all cited identically (with the exception of some of the ISBN-carrying theses coming out of Sweden).

madpower

> Really, I think that it's a bug that BibTeX models these as distinct fields
Maybe one can argue that BibTeX is missing a "simple" thesis field but I rather think it is a bug that any type of thesis in Zotero is exported as @phdthesis using the BibTeX-exporter. This is definitely not correct.

I hope someone related in developing this exporter will take notice of this anyhow. For now, I have to rethink whether Zotero is usable (for me) since unfortunately I have items which are phd theses and others which are master's theses but BTW I have no other thesis type (although there might be a lot of others) in my list of about 300 publications.

greetings,
Matthias

dstillman

Maybe one can argue that BibTeX is missing a "simple" thesis field but I rather think it is a bug that any type of thesis in Zotero is exported as @phdthesis using the BibTeX-exporter. This is definitely not correct.

Then what do you propose?

adamsmith

Maybe one can argue that BibTeX is missing a "simple" thesis field but I rather think it is a bug that any type of thesis in Zotero is exported as @phdthesis using the BibTeX-exporter. This is definitely not correct.

I don't understand, though, what Zotero should do instead in your opinion. BibTex introduced a silly data model for theses that isn't shared by any other bibliographic standard. Zotero does the best possible to deal with this - by exporting to the more common format. What would your suggestion be? (and any solution that involves ad-hoc fixes like "add a drop-down menu" etc. is never going to become part of Zotero - although, as noted above, people can always write extensions.)
And I think you misunderstood the comments about BibTex/LaTeX - while I know (and I'm quite certain Bruce knows) it's prominent in many of the more mathy sciences, those people tend to be (understandably) wedded to jabref anyway and are pretty rare among Zotero users (hence the reference to "people here"). But, once again, if someone wants full BibTex functionality for Zotero - that's what open source is for, just don't expect any core developer time to go into that.

madpower

Sorry, if someone misunderstood my comment: I do not expect any develoepr to invest time if s/he is not interested in. But I think that one of the goals of any such system is that as much people as possible use it. So, if BibTeX is not correctly supported (e.g. import BibTeX and then export it again leads to different outputs) users using BibTeX will unlikely use Zotero. It is as easy as this.

For example, one solution would be that the "Type" field is used as identification. Eg. type "phd" leads to @phdthesis, type "master" leads to @masterthesis and any other type leads to @misc (since there is no solely @thesis in BibTeX).
I thought that such a solution is "obvious". Sorry.

BTW: Saying "BibTeX introduces a silly data model" is wrong and shortminded. BibTeX is open in such a term that if you want your special entrytype (eg. @bachthesis for bachelor theses) then write it and extend your style file for correctly formatting this entry. This is done in about 15 minutes of work. Anyhow, you will notice that in many, many years of existing BibTeX no-one ever thought that such an entry type is really important - otherwise it would already be included in a "standard" BibTeX installation.
Each BibTeX-implementation will however ignore unknown types without any error messages, i.e. you can add your own fields/types in public bib-files while others (having not your extended BibTeX-version) can still use it.

regards,
Matthias

adamsmith

For example, one solution would be that the "Type" field is used as identification. Eg. type "phd" leads to @phdthesis, type "master" leads to @masterthesis and any other type leads to @misc (since there is no solely @thesis in BibTeX).
I thought that such a solution is "obvious". Sorry.

yes that's obvious, but also not very good - requiring precise written content to identify a type is a bad idea in general - moreover, this needs to be something longer, as Zotero uses that field for citation purposes - usually people use "Ph.D. Thesis" - but other may use "Doctoral Dissertation" etc. - whatever they prefer in their writings or their styles - so this really won't do. And correct output is in the eyes of the beholder - for people juggling bibtex formats back and forth in and out of Zotero the current version is indeed incorrect. But for people who use one way import or export the solution proposed by you would produce incorrect results in all cases rather than just for the rather small number of MA theses.

And as for "silly" - I won't insist on the term, but it's incongruent with the underlying concept of Zotero that has always been focused on transfer and sharing of data. That's the main reason why there aren't any custom types in Zotero - and while it's nice that BibTeX doesn't crash with custom types, it's pretty clear that it's less than ideal for sharing the way Zotero is designed to share data.

ajlyon

As I stated before, I certainly think that this could be improved in the BibTeX export translator (https://www.zotero.org/trac/browser/extension/trunk/translators/BibTeX.js). I think that it should be possible to treat some of the unambiguous cases (M.A., M.S. and some more -> @mastersthesis, everything else -> @phdthesis). Since the two @XXXthesis types are treated similarly in most styles, this shouldn't cause issues. Even so, I'm a little afraid of trying to handle this using too clever of logic in the export translator, since this choice of which type to output is being made by guessing, and incorrect guesses can be very confusing for users who are creating items that are, to Zotero, of the same type.

As for the design of BibTeX's theses and BibTeX in general, the flexibility that it provides is great for its intended purpose-- authoring by a number of computer-savvy authors using an openly extensible document authoring system. That's not the same as Zotero's model, and it's not a model for robust bibliographic data interchange.

I think it should be feasible to tweak the BibTeX.js translator so that items that @mastersthesis items it imports will export back to @mastersthesis items, using the Type field as noted. This would require changes to both import and export, since the translator doesn't appear to populate Type on import on the basis of the choice of @XXXthesis.