Best practices for journal debate topic with "pro + con + discussion"

timothyl365

I am interested how best to catalog journal debates/discussions. One of my favorite formats for a debated topic is:

Pro statement
Con statement
Pro rebuttal
Con rebuttal
Comments from many
Pro last word
Con last word

This usually means 7 distinct DOI entries. How should I group? I could use the "related" function and give each section its own entry. Or, I could have only one entry, with 7 attachments. Or, I could merge the PDFs into one attachment and one entry.

I think it would be rare for me to cite such a series in a submitted manuscript. This would be more for my own study of the issue.

Suggestions?

noksagt

I don't understand what you're trying to do. Zotero's data model is that each "item" is a single "reference" (many of which may be uniquely identified by a single DOI and which may have only a single PDF of the full reference).

If you want to organize those references, you may use collections or tags to do so.

If you want to organize your own notes that you attach to those references, you're free to either have multiple notes or a single note broken into sections.

Zotero doesn't "enforce" or "prefer" anything here, but the general functionality it offers that should allow you to use your particular organizational scheme.

timothyl365

Please allow me to clarify. I am looking for suggestions of personal preference; not to understand the technical requirements of the software.

Looking for ideas from people who have found what works for them.

adamsmith

I think related is indeed an elegant way of handling this. Unfortunately you cannot (and likely will not in the near future) be able to define the type of item relations, but still, that seems like the best way to chain a limited number of pieces together.

timothyl365

I have worked with it a bit, so I will record my suggestion for others to find.

For a given series as described in my original post there are seven items, each with an attached PDF and unique DOI. My method:

1) I made each item related to the other.

2) I created a tag called "debate". All series of debate/discussion will be tagged. I have chosen to just tag the first article in the series (the pro point). This way, when I select the "debate" tag, I can easily scan the topics as they are stated in the title of the first article in each series. A quick click on the "related" tag brings access to all the other items in each series.