Import from Clinical Trials Registry

kaimouse

Hi all,

To start with Zotero is great. Thanks to all who makes it happen.

Now to the query - I am having trouble importing citations from clinical trials registries. Both ANZCTR.org.au and clinicaltrials.gov both appear to provide lists of citations in xml, but zotero does not seem to feel satisfied with the legitimacy of the provided format and won't import. Has anyone any insight? I fear I will be *cringe* manually entering many citations...

Thanks,
Kai

kaimouse

Took me a while but I figured a work around via Endnote. Just in case anyone is interested, I followed these instructions http://mdanderson.libanswers.com/faq/170518 then exported from endnote to xml and imported into zotero.

adamsmith

I'm generally inclined to support at least clinicaltrials.gov -- the resent I haven't done so in the past is that I'm not quite sure what to import this as. What's a clinical (or any) trial in terms of a bibliographic entity?

kaimouse

This is a good question. I am conducting a systematic review of a clinical issue and so searching the trials registers is pretty standard, but maybe there isn't a standard way to cite these. I generally set them as a website but use the name of the trial as the name of the page so it comes up as per https://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://www.who.int/ictrp/How_to_cite.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwiL5a-Up4rfAhXIQd4KHXe1BC4QFjADegQICRAB&usg=AOvVaw0-9X8EwU6Igpf00N7WdA9m&cshid=1544068456035

bwiernik

@adamsmith Based on those guidelines, CSL `dataset` seems appropriate.

adamsmith

a bit awkward, but I think that's probably the best approach if we don't want a separate category (which, although I've personally lobbied for a separate category in DOI metadata for study registration, doesn't make sense for Zotero/CSL imo).

bwiernik

Personally, I think that a separate registration type would be reasonable for Zotero and potentially for CSL, particularly if DOI metadata had such a separate type. I could anticipate, for example, citations to registrations being asked to include information about published forms, etc.

j_zhill

Just chipping in to this thread. A citation type "trial" would be appropriate in my view. This is because a) the use of registries to track trials is a mature practice b) trial registration precedes and supersedes any other publication from the trial (therefore if you want to refer to an element of the protocol of a recently registered protocol, a registry entry is the only entity you can refer to and c) reference to trial registry ID has become common practice in published and non published academic output. Similar to the "statute" citation type, there is a reference number/code that forms the instrumental part of the citation: the trial registry UID. From my search of the forums, it looks like it would not be difficult to have a translator scrape the standardised information from trial registries.

How difficult is it to add a citation type?

Another plug for this document published by the World Health Organization:
https://www.who.int/ictrp/How_to_cite.pdf

leonardof

OSF study registries (eg, https://osf.io/aurjt) seem to be imported as journal articles, which they are not. Maybe we need a new type for research registries, clinical trials included.