Missing reference detection?

bann.sfa

Zotero does not seem to detect when a citation/reference in a document is not present in the Zotero library? Mendeley detects this and makes suggestions to either re-add the reference to the library or identifies and suggests similar references in the library to be selected and linked to the citation.

Why is this feature not built into Zotero? It is a major issue - if you delete a duplicate without merging and keep the duplicate version that was not originally referenced in perhaps multiple Word documents, this will not be detected and this reference will never be updated for corrections done in the library? Similarly if you delete a reference from the library and re-add it later (either accidentally or deliberately), then the same issue with an unlinked and never updated Word citation?

Please correct me if I am wrong on this?

bann.sfa

Just following up - is this a recognised problem? Any planned fix?

bwiernik

It is a relatively rare occurrence. Adding an option to import orphaned references is generally planned along with options to view cited items in a document in Zotero. No ETA on when these might be implemented, but one of the Zotero developers is actively working on various improvements to the Word processor plugins. At the moment, you can use the Reference Extractor tool (http://rintze.zelle.me/ref-extractor/) to export the references and import them into Zotero (you will still need to replace the existing citations in the document with references to the newly imported item, but this will save you having to manually enter data).

adamsmith

I don't know -- orphaned references are a real issue and it's not that rare that we have people search for them. I think having some easy way to highlight and reselect them would be nice.