SAE Technical Paper Translator misses either abstract or author/s

Gurdas_Sandhu

The SAE Technical Paper translator seems to be having issues. My observations using two examples:

(1)
http://papers.sae.org/2009-24-0148/
Description: SAE Technical Paper, not published in an SAE journal

- From default icon (shown as Report type): Item saved as Web Page, Title (Yes), Authors (No), Abstract (Yes)

- With 'Using DOI' option: Item saved as Conference Paper, Title (Yes), Authors (Yes), Abstract (No).


(2)
http://papers.sae.org/2014-01-2628/
Description: SAE Technical Paper, also published in an SAE journal

- From default icon (shown as Journal type): Item saved as Web Page, Title (Yes), Authors (No), Abstract (Yes)

- With 'Using DOI' option: Item saved as Journal Article, Title (Yes), Authors (Yes), Abstract (No).

Could someone please fix this?

adamsmith

I have to look more closely, but their site is broken and that's breaking Zotero import.
If you look at the validator output: https://validator.w3.org/nu/?doc=http://papers.sae.org/2009-24-0148/
all those meta name elements it's flagging -- Zotero needs those to import the metadata. I'm not sure how much we can do about this, to be honest. You can try reporting the bare minimum to them, otherwise I can try to take a deeper look at the html to see what specifically breaks this.

DWL-SDCA

Until the SAE repairs their website you can use the free TRID database by the U. S. Transportation Research Board. The default Zotero translator generally does a good job of importing the metadata.

https://trid.trb.org

You will need to do a bit of work to become familiar with the database so that you can limit your search to SAE items only.

You may also need to select the the best Zotero translator type (default, DOI, embedded metadata) to find the choice that provides the most complete metadata for your needs. [Some options don't give you an abstract others don't give you # of pages, etc.]. In other words you will need to do some cutting and pasteing from the TRID webpage for each item. I use TRID daily and find the cut/paste process goes quickly.

You will not automatically get the full-text pdf document automatically.

The SAE website has for many years intermittently failed to offer proper metadata. I gave up on the website as a metadata source. I was a member of SAE for several years and even with member access the site wasn't dependable. I use TRID for metadata and go to SAE for the full text.

adamsmith

(to be clear -- in this case the metadata is on the page, it's just that the HTML is so thoroughly invalid that Zotero can't read it).

DWL-SDCA

Yes, the metadata has always been visible on the SAE webpage and _some_ metadata is embedded. The flawed way that SAE moves their information from their database to render the webpages that you see when you visit the website is inconsistent and messy. The fault is with SAE. I suggested TRID as an alternate way of getting the metadata into Zotero.

Gurdas_Sandhu

Sorry about the late reply. I did not get an email notification about your posts.

@adamsmith, I will contact SAE to see if someone there can take note of the issues at their end.

@DWL-SDCA, I have used TRID in the past but only for my TRR articles. I did not know they cataloged SAE, so that is useful. I checked a few articles and a title match works, but it seems they only catalog a small sub-section of the SAE papers I am interested in. SO, this will help, but I think it will be severely limited for my needs.

Gurdas_Sandhu

I sent an email to SAE and they responded promptly that the issue has been forwarded to the concerned team. Let's hope they can fix the metadata. SAE papers is an important source in my field and it would be nice to not have to make manual edits each time I add an article.

Should anyone else wish to add their voice, please contact SAE Customer Service at:

Email: custsvc@sae.org
1-877-606-7323 (U.S. and Canada only)
1-724-776-4970 (outside U.S. and Canada)

Gurdas_Sandhu

Noticed another thread that looks related:
https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/comment/252709

Gurdas_Sandhu

I heard back from a person in the 'Discovery and Information Architecture' group at SAE. Here's what the email says:

"We are in the process of updating out meta tags on our SAE.org and MOBILUS Digital Library to facilitate better data capture on bibliography management tools like Zotero. This is a major undertaking so it is taking some time to implement."

Must thank SAE for the prompt response and staying on top of this issue.

Gurdas_Sandhu

Received a call from a person in SAE's Digital Publishing, Content Management group. They have promised to look in to this issue.

@adamsmith I described the issue as best I could, but I also suggested they post here regarding any questions they may have or any progress they make. I also told them to tag you specifically if they have a detailed technical question.

Gurdas_Sandhu

SAE has applied an update. Zotero is capturing the full and correct citation now. I tested with 5.0 Beta and SAE tested with Zotero Firefox.

adamsmith

Did you hear from them? @zuphilip also came up with a fix on our side.

Gurdas_Sandhu

Yes, they sent me an email saying "the fix for the papers.sae.org page has been released to production." Incidentally, I had saved a few papers couple hours before receiving that email and had already noticed Zotero was able to grab the full and correct citation.

Gurdas_Sandhu

I reported to SAE that grabbing metadata from MOBILUS was still not perfect. SAE's response:
"We currently have a development on the roadmap for Embedded data on details pages. The main purpose for that is to provide semantic information to search crawlers, but I believe that adding the embedded metadata into the page would also allow Zotero to detect the citation information.

As a workaround, Mobilus currently has 4 downloadable formats for citations, BibTex, RefWorks, EndNote, and RefMan, that can be downloaded using the export functionality. I would assume that Zotero is able to import those citation files. This functionality was recently revised to produce more accurate citations based on content information.
"

Gurdas_Sandhu

**update** If I change the extension of the downloaded file from .txt to .ris, and then double-click it, I get a popup asking if I wish to import the file, and there is an option to create new collection. If I leave that option unchecked, Zotero creates a new item without creating a new collection. So, does that mean SAE MOBILUS should serve RIS files ending in .ris and not .txt?

I tested SAE MOBILUS but had issues. I specified that the RIS file should "open with" Zotero, but nothing happens in Zotero. The file does get downloaded but Zotero is not doing anything with it. if I use the File > Import function and point to the downloaded RIS text file, Zotero creates a new collection and puts the new item in it. The new item metadata looks fine. So, Zotero is reading the RIS okay but the workflow is not smooth.

An example RIS file downloaded from MOBILUS:
https://1drv.ms/f/s!Atcr8aCyjBrulNgIQIHvp-yI_ALT3A

Zotero 5.0.4 on Windows 10 and Firefox 53.0.3

Gurdas_Sandhu

Grabbing SAE Technical paper metadata is back to sub-optimal and is behaving as described in the original post. Is this due to a change at SAE's end?

Example:
http://papers.sae.org/2009-24-0148/
http://papers.sae.org/2014-01-1594/