There's no debate about the option -- it exists and isn't going away, but about further promoting it, e.g. by supporting it in the API. Exporting into an unstandardized format that, e.g., Zotero isn't able to import is conceptually quite problematic. People are already misunderstanding this and expecting Zotero to import CSV
Emiliano added CSV import too recently - it works well
All you need is one column with the word Title in it. The translator presents that title to Microsoft academic and then imports it from there. Works very nicely:
I'm glad that works for you; that's why it's great that Zotero is customizable, but that's not importing from a spreadsheet. That's a bulk lookup function.
E.g. you would of course not get Zotero tags or notes that way, even though they're in Zotero's CSV export.
I think the biggest argument for CSV export with Zapier is the ability to utilize external report generators and for web publishing. That is a pretty strong, universal use case. Customizable reports and web publishing can be done with Zotero now but they are probably two of the weaker features (balanced against hundreds of terrific features). Being able to use other web apps which focus in these areas is a win-win for all.
Also the CSV exported I created for you duplicates data (once for each tag/collection) in order to facilitate SeekTable reports -- that's not something I expect many people to want to have. @adamsmith is absolutely right that CSV as a format actually can't hold Zotero's data without making some non-CSV assumptions on what is in at least those two columns, and TBH, for general export, the assumptions Zotero's CSV makes are more sensible than what we did for SeekTable. But CSV will always have compromises one way or the other.
A conceptually better way at least would be to export Excel -- that way, tags/collections could live in a separate sheet where their assignment to items is recorded. But that would be an uncommon format, and I don't reckon any of the Trello , Coda, Seektable, and Airtable etc family are going to understand it anytime soon.
Is the suggested idea to develop a Zapier app for Zotero in the pipeline? That'd be a zap I'd be using pretty soon! https://zapier.com/platform/ I'm not a developer, but a Zotero and Zapier superuser! And my clients would benefit from such an integration!
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All you need is one column with the word Title in it. The translator presents that title to Microsoft academic and then imports it from there. Works very nicely:
https://github.com/retorquere/zotero-bulk-mas-import
E.g. you would of course not get Zotero tags or notes that way, even though they're in Zotero's CSV export.
I think the biggest argument for CSV export with Zapier is the ability to utilize external report generators and for web publishing. That is a pretty strong, universal use case. Customizable reports and web publishing can be done with Zotero now but they are probably two of the weaker features (balanced against hundreds of terrific features). Being able to use other web apps which focus in these areas is a win-win for all.
A conceptually better way at least would be to export Excel -- that way, tags/collections could live in a separate sheet where their assignment to items is recorded. But that would be an uncommon format, and I don't reckon any of the Trello , Coda, Seektable, and Airtable etc family are going to understand it anytime soon.
https://zapier.com/platform/
I'm not a developer, but a Zotero and Zapier superuser! And my clients would benefit from such an integration!