why does DOI become a note?

dankelley

I'm not sure whether this is an issue with the journals I use, but very commonly (or perhaps always) the DOI enters as an attached note. I'd prefer it be stored within the entry, because the attachments I make are almost always links to local PDFs, and so I use the icon indicating an attachment as a way to know whether I have a PDF.

My journals don't want me listing DOIs in citations, so to clean things up, I just remove those attachments. This is an extra step that seems a bit silly.

Is there a setting I can use to make zotero either store the DOI in the bibliographic item, or ignore it? (This latter choice would be fine with me, actually, since my journals don't want DOIs listed in reference lists anyway, and I don't know a single colleague who searches by DOI.)

Thanks, to anyone reading this. (And a special nod to my friends in the US, where this day is Thanksgiving.)

bwiernik

What exactly do you mean? How are you adding items to Zotero?

adamsmith

if I understand correctly, we'd want a couple of sample URLs and the name(s) of databases you're using. The DOI ideally would never land in a note.

dankelley

I almost always add by importing a .ris file, since all the journals I use provide those nowadays. The problem doesn't seem to be specific to any particular journal. The URL given below is an illustration ... it brings up a .ris file, in which the DOI is in an 'M3' field. (I didn't see how to paste the .ris file as an attachment.)

https://journals.ametsoc.org/action/showCitFormats?doi=10.1175/JPO-D-18-0057.1

bwiernik

You almost never need to import using a RIS file. Instead, your best option is to use the Save to Zotero button in your browser toolbar:
https://www.zotero.org/support/getting_stuff_into_your_library

That said, RIS import should work, but M3 is a very unusual field for them to store a DOI in (the standard is DO). The translator maintainers would need to look to see whether the RIS translator should be updated.

dankelley

Thanks very much for that. I'll start using that as my first trial.

I had stopped using save-to-zotero because it seems a bit less reliable than working with a downloaded RIS. (Almost always, I have a quick look at the .ris to check for errors like author names in all-caps, which I can fix quickly with VIM but find a bit slower to fix in zotero.)

Wow, zotero is a great thing -- not just as a product but as a community!

Many thanks from Nova Scotia.

bwiernik

The save to Zotero button should almost always have the best quality metadata. Zotero generally fixes things like authors in all caps automatically during import. If you find a site where there are errors, report them here with a URL and they can be fixed.