Automatically retrieving DOIs for existing library items

sdspieg

I tried to look for this on the forum, but wasn't able to find it. So: is it possible to find the DOIs of various items that have been properly added to a Zotero library - and preferably of course in an automated way? And is there any reason why libraries/databases (like EBSCO don't have those DOIs?

adamsmith

There isn't currently, no. Trying to do some version of this is on the list of requested features (re-fetch metadata https://www.zotero.org/support/requested_features ) but it's not trivial -- not so much because it's hard to find that information (CrossRef has a tool) but because it's tricky to decide how to do the metadata lookup right and not too much of a mess to maintain -- other people want other things like abstracts, PDFs, PMIDs, etc. that are more likely to be in different databases.

Why someone like EBSCO doesn't trouble with DOIs I have no idea. I'd guess because of the misguided idea that they're for publishers: the DOI will typically link to a copy of the paper on the publisher's site, not on EBSCO.

bwiernik

It’s on my agenda for the next month to add this functionality to my DOI Manager plugin.

adamsmith

using the CrossRef lookup tool or something else?

bwiernik

I was planning on using the CrossRef OpenURL API, yes. I was going to look into getting my own API key rather than relying on Zotero’s.

sdspieg

Any progress on this? I really still think this would be EXTREMELY useful to many of us