Don't delete DOI when changing item type to 'book section' (but copy it to Extra field)

edited October 17, 2017
Somehow I thought that Z5 fixed the known issue that book sections cannot have DOIs, but nope, that's still on the cards (I know about the "Extra" field workaround).

Here's a #papercut I run into every so often: I start out with an item classified as 'journal article' which actually is a book section. (Example here.) Z translators save it in my library complete with DOI. Then I change the item type to 'book section' and Z tells me it'll delete the DOI. As long as it can't deal with it, I wish it would at least copy it to the Extra field for me.

Copying the DOI seems similar conceptually to what Z already can do when changing a Book to a Book section to create an item for a chapter (it copies Title to Book title), so I'm guessing the machinery already exists for juggling content across fields when triggered by item type changes.
  • Updates to fields are coming in Zotero 5.1. It would be nice if DOI was moved to Extra and back when changing items, but there isn’t code for that sort of field hackery (existing code only moves content between proper fields), so I wouldn’t be surprised if the developers just focused on the actual long-term solution.

    Also, in general for most sites, book sections are imported properly with DOI in Extra. @adamsmith Can the translator be improved here?
  • Yeah, I'd want to look closer here -- I think we should be able to use "citation_inbook_title" as a heuristic for recognizing this as a chapter.
  • Revisiting this >5 year old thread of mine because it's *still* a papercut I run into every so often. Generalized: an item type change should never lead to losing the DOI...
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