Incorrect journal abbreviation

Generally, the automatic generation of MEDLINE abbreviations in the bibliography works really well, in my experience. However, I have an issue with a specific journal, which I am citing quite often, namely the 'Journal of Controlled Release'.

I would like this journal to appear as 'J. Control. Release', however it is currently shown as 'J. Controlled Release', which is incorrect to my knowledge.

Does anyone know if I can manually add this rule as a general document preference etc.?
  • @dstillman there are a couple of smaller issues with the abbreviation list that'd be helpful to fix. I think we've been hesitant to touch it in the past, but would you take PRs?

    Also, do you have any medium-term plans to add more sophisticated abbreviations support or would that likely have to happen via add-on?
  • Sure, we can fix things. I've just updated abbreviations.json to be pretty-printed, which increases the size from 1.1 MB to 1.3 MB but should make editing easier and diffs much smaller.

    I'd welcome better abbreviations support, but not sure when we'll be able to work on it ourselves, and it's not really our area of experience. If someone wants to take it on, I'd be happy to advise. I think we sketched out a possible approach in another thread a while back.
  • Have the document preferences window for the word processor integration and the create bibliography window been React-ified yet?
  • I am confused about how the abbreviations.json is used. I understand that (currently) the MEDLINE abbreviations are only applied when using the word processor add-in with the MEDLINE checkbox marked (but not within the Zotero software).

    However, it appears that Zotero NEVER abbreviates a journal's name in the Journal Abbrev field. After reviewing the abbreviations.json, Zotero appears to ignore the abbreviations.json completely and simply displays the Publication name in the Journal Abbrev field - common word abbreviations, available in abbreviations.json, are ignored. And this true regardless of the type of journal (e.g., medical, education, engineering, etc.).

    Shouldn't the Zotero abbreviations.json be applied WITHIN the software to the Publication field to obtain the Journal Abbrev field (regardless of the user's MEDLINE setting)? It simply is not happening...

    Example: the "Journal of Diagnostic Medical Sonography" - each word in the Publication name is found in the abbreviation.json, so the Journal Abbrev field should be "J Diagn Med Sonogr" -- unfortunately, "Journal of Diagnostic Medical Sonography" is displayed in both the Publication and Journal Abbrev fields.

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nlmcatalog/8511806

    Thanks
  • The journal abbreviation field is filled via import from the site's metadata. That sometimes has correct journal abbreviations (e.g. if you import from Pubmed, you'd typically get J. Diagn. Med. Sonogr. in the field), in other cases publisher just repeat the journal title where an abbreviation should be. Import doesn't use the abbreviations filter at all.

    Given that the expectation for standard Medline abbreviations users would typically be to use automated abbreviations, so that the journalAbbrev. field is mainly for people following other abbreviations patterns, I think that's probably the right call, though I see that may be a matter of taste.

    The ability to apply automated abbreviations on citations generated outside the Word add-on, on the other hand, is a no-brainer as a feature request (and I don't think anyone disagrees with it), it's just hasn't happened yet (and I have no idea with what priority devs consider it).
  • The ability to apply automated abbreviations on citations generated outside the Word add-on, on the other hand, is a no-brainer as a feature request (and I don't think anyone disagrees with it), it's just hasn't happened yet (and I have no idea with what priority devs consider it).
    This is #292? I don't know when we'd be able to get to that, but I'd be happy to review a pull request for it.
  • (Yes, that's the one I meant)
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