Importing citavi "citation key" into zotero "short title"

umg315
Hi everyone,

when importing from citavi xml into zotero, the citavi-field "citation key" (german "Kurzbeleg") is apparently not transferred into zotero.

I managed to use a macro to copy the citation keys into some other field (within citavi). This way I can get the information into zotero, but so far I have not found a citavi field which imports directly into the zotero short title. Is there even one, or maybe another way to achieve this?

Thanks in advance!
  • bwiernik
    What is your purpose behind wanting to store the citation key in Short Title? What do you use the citation key for?
  • umg315
    edited October 3, 2018
    In citavi, the citation key is used for creating short citations, like "Müller (2005)", instead of citing the full title. I was assuming that the short title is the zotero version of that function, since it is used for citation in some styles.

    Edit:
    As citation key, I use the Format "Author, Keyword (Year)". The more common way would probably be to just use a specific ruleset in the citavi style editor, but I could not get that to work the way I wanted, since the keywords used may vary: sometimes it's just a single word from the full title, sometimes more.
    (e.g.: Müller, Considerations (2005) vs. Müller, Thoughts and Considerations (2006)

    There is also a "Short Title" in citavi, but that is not intended for citations and is not imported either.

    This might have been somewhat confusing, but that's what I understood from the citavi manual: https://www1.citavi.com/sub/manual6/en/index.html?short_titles_citations_and_citation_keys.html
  • bwiernik
    edited October 3, 2018
    Okay, this is all doable. In general, for short citations like you describe, I would just put the keyword in the Short Title field, rather than the author and year, and let the citation style add the author and year.

    Could you paste an export of the Citavi XML for one of these items to hastebin.com and link here?

    Also, as an aside, if you are doing lots of legal citations, I would recommend using Juris-M, a third-party version of Zotero with much expanded legal citation support (particularly non-US/UK legal citations).
  • adamsmith
    FWIW, the way Zotero works, you would probably not want author and date in there, but just the short title, i.e. "Considerations" or "Thoughts and Considerations" as the rest of the short form may vary between citation styles.
  • umg315
    Thanks a lot for your help @bwiernik, @adamsmith !

    Yes, just putting the Keyword in Short title is certainly the best way, but that means I have to manually edit all my citation keys after all? I've been at this point before, when I was trying to create a short citation in citavi and failed - so the short citation in my citavi style now consists only of "Citation Key"

    By the way, no legal citations, I am a historian - but then again, I have to cite editions of sources, which sometimes get even more complicated short titles/citation keys.

    I have included examples of book, journal article and source edition in the xml: https://hastebin.com/utinohoxoh.xml
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