[Solved] Translator for new SAGE site has problems (it is the SAGE site that has the problems)

edited January 1, 2017
For the past several weeks SAGE has been presenting a new website format to some users and now, it seems, to all.

Regarding: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1541204015581389
That is but one example. The problem exists with all SAGE journals.

The Zotero translator isn't bringing in correct dates (the issue-date doesn't seem to be in the page source header or body data). However, the correct issue publication date is in the MEDLARS metadata and also in the RIS but it seems that the publication-year is with the tag DA and the initial received-date is tagged PY. Also, though it may not make a difference, the RIS data has peculiar CR/LF EOL characters.

The subtitle exists in the html but nowhere else.
<div class="publicationContentSubTitle">
<h1>
An Alternative Test of the Snares Hypothesis
</h1>
</div>


Although the character set is announced as UTF-8; quotes, apostrophes, dashes and other characters are not properly coded. Thus article titles and abstracts end up with "?" where the character should be.


If I import the BibTex into Zotero the publication date is correct but the journal ISSN is omitted.

If I download in enw format and import the file into Zotero, the characters display correctly and the issue publication date is correct but the language nor the ISSN is imported.

The Zotero embedded metadata import brings in the Language how none of the other export or import options bring the language code into Zotero.

I know people at SAGE both in the editorial and production sides. I notified them of the issues when I found them several weeks ago. These are perceptive and reasonable professionals but say that 1) they actually prefer the epub date to the print issue date; 2) the subtitle, they say, is on the web page and the metadata doesn't include it because it isn't necessary for identifying the item; and 3) they claim that the problem with apostrophes, dashes, etc must be on my end because the web page looks fine. (!) One person said that the metadata imports into EndNote correctly and that SAGE cannot be responsible of adapting metadata for each of the many bibliography management software vendors around the world. When I wrote of accepted metadata standards in reply I was informed that theirs is a perfectly acceptable variant of the many standards.

It looks as though SAGE will not be changing their metadata soon.

I hope that Zotero can save the day.

Thanks
  • a couple of examples for each of these issues would be great.
  • edited December 29, 2016
    All articles in this and other SAGE journals have the Publication year (if the epub year is earlier than the print-publication year) and the subtitle problem.

    More examples of the character encoding issue:

    http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0569434516652040

    http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1369433216649390

    http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1541204015615193

    http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1541204015581058

    http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1541204014565670

    http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1541204015569317

    Thanks!

    [I see from a post in another thread that you are with family. This isn't a terribly high priority as I can work around these issues. Please put it on your list.]
  • edited December 30, 2016
    The attitude of SAGE on this problems is very problematic. They receive a lot of money from the universities and libraries and should therefore always trying to optimize their service for their costumers. Moreover, it is always a good idea to stick to standards and common data formats and spend time to these bibliographic metadata.

    I don't have any contacts at SAGE which I can reach out for this. But everybody who can, should do, or continue to complaint.

    But, yes we should be able to correct these things on the Zotero side (I started to work on this). This just means more work and more fragile translators. Moreover, the errors in the RIS data will stay for all other reference management systems.
  • I don't have any contacts at SAGE which I can reach out for this.
    SAGE recently hired Ian Mulvany (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/press/sage-publishing-hires-ian-mulvany-from-elife-to-engage-with-big-data-and-social-research), who previously worked at Mendeley and eLife, and who has some knowledge of the reference manager world. I don't know him that well, but he did correspond with the CSL folks back in the day when he was at Mendeley. I can reach out.

    Can we compile a clearer list of issues we'd like them to fix?
  • Problem: PDF will not automatically download from Sage.
    Example URL: http://journals.sagepub.com.proxy.cc.uic.edu/doi/full/10.1177/0149206314525205
    I ran a debug of a download attempt, which I uploaded to the Zotero server with Debug ID = D1234165564.
    Zotero version: 4.0.29.16 (Firefox add-on)

    I think and hope that I am adding to and not hijacking this topic. If this is unrelated to the current topic, I am happy to repost under a new thread.

    I believe (though did not document) that this started when Sage's interface changed for me very recently (I now get the Adobe icon in the circle as the link to download a pdf). I can download the pdf just fine by clicking on the icon, but Zotero will not download it automatically (I get the red X in the download box after Zotero tries).

    My setup is the same as it has always been (same computer, mode of connecting, my university ID, etc.) As a result, I am suspicious that Sage made some change and, perhaps, I need to make a change in preferences to match?

    I am somewhat suspicious of the line that reads "Downloaded PDF did not have MIME type 'application/pdf' in Attachments.importFromURL()". However, I do not know Zotero's code and I find it difficult to believe that Sage would alter mime type references. So, this might well be unrelated to my problem.

    Since I can manually download the pdfs, this is not an urgent issue for me. BTW, I love and am greatly impressed with Zotero. Great job!
  • (I have a fix for the PDF issue, will deploy shortly with zuphilip's other SAGE fixes)
  • all issues in this thread have now been fixed.
    Your version of Zotero will automatically update within 24hs, or you can update manually using the "Update Now" button in the "General" tab of the Zotero preferences. If you're using Standalone, restart Zotero and your browser after updating.

    Any further problems let us know & thanks for reporting
  • That is great, especially since you were adjusting to changes on Sage's end! I also want to say that this sort of response is normal for Zotero and it's easy to start to take it for granted. It would sure be nice if all products had this kind of team behind them. Have a wonderful new year!
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