Migration Citavi+LibreOffice --> Zotero+LibreOffice

petrarca

I would like to migrate from Citavi over to Zotero (both used with LibreOffice).

I can manage to migrate the Citavi library/database over to Zotero. However, the link between Zotero and the LibreOffice document is lost, i.e. I do have my libraries in Zotero and I do have my LibreOffice document with all references (as fields) included but they are not linked to each other anymore. So if for example I change a book title in Zotero it's not updated in the text document.

Am I doing something wrong? Has someone experience with this and Is there a specific migration path to follow maybe?


Note: the LibreOffice docs are too large (several hundred references alltogether) to do anything manually.

LiborA

CITAVI use your own system of fields in the document and it is not compatible with Zotero, I think. You have to add all citations to the document again.
You can migrate data from CITAVI to Zotero, but it is something different as migrate citations in the text documents. I've never heard about automatic changing the field in the documents from one system to another else.

bwiernik

There isn’t currently any method available to automatically convert Citavi citations to Zotero citations, sorry. I would recommend finishing the document in Citavi before switching. Otherwise, if you are using an Author-Date style, you could convert the Citavi fields to regular text, then insert new citations using Zotero, then, when you are finished with your writing, use LibreOffice’s sort feature to combine the two bibliographies.

petrarca

Thanks for the comments! I was afraid there is no automated way to convert the actual citations from Citavi to Zotero as I searched around a lot myself already. As I also need to retain my old works (articles, thesis, etc.; all with citations made with Citavi) I will stick with Citavi for the time being and renew my licence.

Generally speaking I think it would be worth thinking about an automated tool (standalone, not part of Zotero itself, used one-time only) which would migrate a specific document from Citavi-citations to Zotero-citations. I have no insights to tell if this is reasonably feasible at all but could potentially exploit a large user base of Citavi users.

bwiernik

Having used both, I would would honestly recommend switching to Zotero and then updating your documents as needed (or at least starting new documents with Zotero). But of course do what makes sense for you.

DWL-SDCA

I switched from EndNote to Zotero in the midst of the final draft of my doctoral thesis (220 pages 410 citations). It only required a few hours. The process was not just busy-work. I ended up finding a couple of typos but, more importantly, I found a few sentences that needed to be changed -- two sentences that made no sense until I found and modified them. Work with copies of your manuscript. It may help to also have a printed copy of your manuscript that you use to tick off the references that you have updated.