(How) does store references in document actually work?

caspar.trimmer

I am an editor, meaning that I receive Word documents from authors who have used Zotero for their references. Often the references need fixing, and I want to do this via Zotero rather than manually changing every iteration in the Word document. But unless the references have been taken from a group library that I am a member of, it doesn't work - whether they've stored references in the document or not (as far as I can see this option makes no difference whatsoever).

This is annoying, as many of the authors have huge My Librarys, and I don't want them to have to copy over every reference they want to use into a new Group Library.

I've tried that trick of creating a new library from the references in the document ... but the in-text citations are still connected to the original library, not the new library, so it's not much help.

Am I missing something? Or does anyone have a suggested workaround? I use 5.0 on a Mac (OS X).

Thanks.

bwiernik

“Store references in document” embeds the citation data in the document so that citations/bibliography can be reformatted (e.g., to change styles or reorder citations) without having access to the item in your own Zotero database. It’s purpose is to enable transportability of documents across users, not editing of the references necessarily. (The option itself has been removed in current versions of Zotero—it is now always enabled—you should update your Zotero to the current version).

You can view the embedded citation data for Zotero fields by typing Alt+F9 or right-clicking on the citation and choosing Toggle Field Codes. You could try to edit the embedded data there. I’m not sure if that would work, or what the effect would be if you send the document back to the authors for revisions. I suspect changes to the embedded data would be overridden by their original incorrect data in their library.

I would recommend giving the authors a list of changes to make for the items in their libraries during a revision. You could also use Reference Extractor to add the item to your/a group library and then replace the original citations with ones to the item in your database.

A “Document Collections” feature is planned where all of the items cited in a document would be shown in one place in Zotero. The exact nature of this feature is still being determined. It will likely include some method of adding an item to your library. A feature to edit an item missing from the database and to have these changes made in the originating library the next time it is available would also be very nice.

damnation

You can give this a try: https://github.com/rmzelle/ref-extractor via http://rintze.zelle.me/ref-extractor/ :) (courtesy to Zotero/CSL superstar Rintze)

caspar.trimmer

Bwiernik: thanks for your comprehensive answer. I guess the clincher there is that editing the data would mean your edits overwrite their My Library entry, which would be undesirable.

I look forward to the Document Collections feature. I hope it will make it possible to create a new shared collection for the document with the references in the document now linked to the shared collection rather than the original library. THAT would get over the whole rewriting permissions issue. Is there a Zotero suggestion box I could drop that into?

Damnation: thanks, I'll check that out - though I guess it won't reconnect the references in the document to the new library ... fingers crossed.

LiborA

I am also an editor of one new journal. For the first issue I use this workaround:
1. For each article, I prepare subcollection in the group library.
2. I insert all literature from manuscript to this subcollection (manually or by importing DOI, ISBN etc.)
3. I insert new citation and bibliography to the manuscript

caspar.trimmer

Hello to a fellow editor! Thanks for the tip.

bwiernik

Something like you describe where you can add an item to a library of your choosing and make that the canonical source for the item is likely how the feature will work.

caspar.trimmer

I look forward to that.