"From Duplicate" Folder under some references messing things up

Hi All,
I switched from Mendeley to Zotero. I've noticed that some citations show ups as duplicates, e.g. "1988a" and "1988b", yet there are no Duplicate Items detected by Zotero. However, when I look at a reference and open the little carrot menu, there is a folder showing up called "From Duplicate 1 (*.name of article)". I am guessing that this has something to do with the problem I am having. I also am having trouble finding anyone else with this issue. What is this "From Duplicate" folder, and how do I merge it with a functioning reference?

Thank you for any advice.
  • I'm not sure what "little carrot menu" you're referring to — if you want, you can take a screenshot, upload it somewhere (e.g., Dropbox), and provide a link here — but "From Duplicate" isn't anything from Zotero. Zotero has a "Duplicate Items" collection for its own duplicate detection that lets you merge items.
  • The carrot menu I mean to refer to is the one to the left of any reference on the Zotero desktop application. I typically use Journal Articles, so when I open the carrot menu under any article I typically see a PDF and the PubMed entry. For the references I am having issues with, I am seeing an additional folder.

    Here is an image of what I am seeing for clarity.

    https://www.dropbox.com/s/rwole4cn2mo9gsj/2020zotero_example.PNG?dl=0

    What I *think* may be happening is that the import from Mendeley worked well on the reference side, but the Word document I am working on has links in it from Mendeley that are mucking up something in Zotero. I am not a programmer, so hopefully that is not too outlandish sounding. All I know is I want to be 100% Zotero, and get this issue resolved. Thank you.
  • That's not a folder — that's just a note. It's not from Zotero.

    Yes, while Zotero can read and use existing Mendeley citations in the Word document, those citations won't be linked to the imported items in your Zotero database. (It's possible we could support that in the future, but it doesn't happen now.) So for anything you want to cite a second time, you'd need to replace the original citation as well.
  • Funny how once you mention it's a note and not a folder that all I can see is a note icon. Thank you for clarity. That note icon shows up for all of the problem citations.

    I will go through and update all citations to match ones in "My Library", but I have noticed another reason to do this. When I add a bibliography any citation that was originally Mendeley is incomplete. For example, the authors, year, article, and journal appear correctly, but there is no issue or page number. This means I need to update all citations individually--it would be helpful if this was automated. Interestingly, while page number etc are missing on the desktop reference manager side, the DOI is not. It would be powerful to have the ability to 'update based on an identifier". Currently, I need to copy the DOI, create a new reference with the same DOI, and then merge the new reference with the old one. However, even doing this doesn't seem to add the page numbers when I refresh the bibliography.

    Either way, I will go through and update the old Mendeley citations (~100 pg document, so it's going to be a very long while), but I am now concerned about the page issue/volume/page-numbers not showing up in the bibliography.
  • That note icon shows up for all of the problem citations.
    It would just be that those are the citations you imported from Mendeley, not anything specifically about the notes themselves. I assume those notes came from something that happened while your data was still in Mendeley.
    When I add a bibliography any citation that was originally Mendeley is incomplete. For example, the authors, year, article, and journal appear correctly, but there is no issue or page number.
    Are you saying the issues and page numbers appeared in Mendeley and weren't imported, or that they were missing in Mendeley as well? If the former, how did you import your library? Using Zotero's Mendeley importer or a manual export/import (e.g., via RIS or BibTeX)?
    It would be powerful to have the ability to 'update based on an identifier".
    Yes, this is (as I'm sure you've seen) a very common request, and we're working on it, though we're trying to do it in a way that doesn't easily wipe out existing good data and replace it with bad data, as can be the case with that feature in Mendeley.
    However, even doing this doesn't seem to add the page numbers when I refresh the bibliography.
    Well, that depends. If you're talking about a citation from Mendeley, that won't ever change. If you're talking about a citation from Zotero, that should certainly reflect the data in Zotero. If you merge two items, existing citations pointing at one should update to use the data from the one that remains. You can test this in a new document.
Sign In or Register to comment.