Create a bibliography with the metadata of a pdf

heraclito2077
Hi,
I generally don't use Mendely, but I tried and was able to do the following: I dragged a pdf onto Mendeley and Mendeley created a bibliography for me from the pdf (apparently reading the pdf metadata). Can I do this in Zotero?
Thanks in advance
  • bwiernik
    Yes. https://www.zotero.org/support/retrieve_pdf_metadata
  • heraclito2077
    I was offline
  • taxaguy
    Yes, Mendeley 1.19.4 does retrieve PDF metadata offline correctly when metadata is available in the document properties. Even if metadata is not available, it still tries to grab research paper and author names from inside the PDF, it is partially correct in such cases. And when we go online it asks permission to grab correct details from internet, but doesn't do a good job unless DOI or URL is very stable. Sometimes it messes up with manually added details. (Zotero is very good at grabbing correct details when onilne)

    Zotero 5.0.85 is unable to grab details from PDF metadata in document properties when offline. Is there any solution?

    Screenshots: Adding PDFs while offline in Zotero Vs Mendeley
    https://imgur.com/a/zQ4dQQ6

    Document tested: https://zookeys.pensoft.net/article/50478/
  • dstillman
    No. High-quality PDF metadata retrieval requires an internet connection. And we don't use embedded PDF metadata at all, because it's generally not very good. Mendeley doesn't tend to care much about metadata quality, so what they do isn't really relevant to us.

    I don't see a lot of value in doing a bad job of this offline when it can be done properly the next time there's a connection, while in the meantime risking generating incorrect citations for people (in this case, missing journal name, incorrect volume, extra spaces in the title…).

    Note, too, that while Mendeley tends to take a PDF-first approach, in a standard Zotero workflow, it would be fairly unusual to end up with a PDF without a parent item while offline. In Zotero, you generally download from the article page to begin with, which also downloads the PDF. If you do end up with just a PDF, there's a good chance it came from a direct web link or an email, in which case you're online and Zotero can just retrieve metadata.
  • taxaguy
    Yes, getting incorrect citations is not worth it. Thanks for the clarification. I am grateful that I moved to Zotero.

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