Pubmed home page not rendering using proxy

mkostura

I have just started to experience an issue with the proxy used by Zotero to access my university library. I use PubMed heavily and the Zotero proxy connection has worked flawlessly in the past. Now what seems to be happening is that the PubMed home page is not rendering properly and is essentially unusable. If I disable the Zotero add-on the page loads appropriately. Seems to be an interaction between the Zotero connector, the proxy and Pubmed. Not sure where to start to debug the problem but I though that here would be a first step.

adamsmith

Are you saying this is working correctly if you use the proxy but not the Zotero connector?

mkostura

I have been doing a bit more debugging. I eliminated the proxy description from the connector. Now the PubMed page loads properly. If I add back the proxy description (the configured proxy is %h.prox.lib.ncsu.edu/%p) the page is not detected automatically by host name and will still load properly. If I manually choose to load the PubMed home page via the proxy, the page will not load correctly. I have performed the same sequence of events using another hostname (for the homepage of Science magazine) and the procedure works the same. The Zotero connector does not ask if I wish to connect via the proxy. I select the proxy manually and the page loads via the NC State library. The page loads appropriately.

So it seems there are some issues with the proxy. Two questions: First has the proxy script changed at NC State? That is a question for the library that I have yet to resolve. Second, is the Zotero Connector able to recognize a journal site and ask if that page should be loaded via the proxy?

dstillman

What do you mean by "the page will not load correctly"? What's the URL you're seeing in your address bar, and what exactly is happening?

dstillman

(But also, I wouldn't think PubMed should ever be proxied, since it's a public site. I would remove that from the list of proxied hosts and debug this with another site that's known to require proxying for full access.)

adamsmith

(Many universities have pubmed integrations that link to gated full text versions available through the university, so it can indeed make sense to proxy it)

dstillman

@adamsmith: Is that an official sort of integration PubMed supports, or do sites just modify the PubMed pages to include links?

mkostura

Sorry for being imprecise in my language. The PubMed home page is accessed but does not accurately display fonts, buttons, boxes etc when linked via the proxy. Without the proxy it looks fine.

The proxy works when linking to several other journal sites (eg https://www-sciencemag-org.prox.lib.ncsu.edu/ and https://www-pnas-org.prox.lib.ncsu.edu/)
I have several other journal working the same way. The proxy, such as it is, seems to be working fine except with Pubmed.

I note that the proxy is not automatically detecting a hostname with the NCSU proxy. I have to manually use the Zotero connector to connect through the proxy.

I proxy PubMed for the reasons mentioned by adamsmith. NCSU has links to fulltext version of articles behind subscription walls. Also it has links to Ovid, Web of Science etc. Very handy.

dstillman

The PubMed home page is accessed but does not accurately display fonts, buttons, boxes etc when linked via the proxy.

That doesn't sound like a Zotero issue. It just sounds like your proxy server isn't properly proxying PubMed, which would be something you would have to report to your library if you wanted to access PubMed through the proxy. The only thing Zotero does here is automatically redirect an unproxied URL through your proxy if it's configured to do so. You can test whether Zotero is relevant simply by loading https://[domain-with-hyphens-in-place-of-periods].prox.lib.ncsu.edu/ in your browser with the Zotero Connector disabled.

NCSU has links to fulltext version of articles behind subscription walls.

Right, but how, exactly? Is it modifying PubMed pages to insert those links?

mkostura

I concur that this seems to be a proxy issue. As I mentioned above I have contacted the NCSU library helpdesk but have not had much satisfaction. They of course suggested I change my browser or use a different reference manager, neither of which are useful suggestions. Zotero is one of 4 ref managers that the library recommends and supports so I cannot figure what the help desk is suggesting. I have been using Zotero for about 11 years so I am not inclinded to switch. 99.9% of the time the connector works perfectly and when a problem does occur it is usually related to the behavior of the proxy server.

Thanks for the help. I will work with the library to resolve the issue.

adamsmith

Is that an official sort of integration PubMed supports, or do sites just modify the PubMed pages to include links?

@dstillman -- I think it's an official feature, but I don't know for sure nor do I know how it works, but see e.g. Brown's version here, which doesn't appear to even need a proxy: https://libguides.brown.edu/pubmed#s-lg-box-25560039-container
University of Cincinnati does route people very purposefully through a proxy though: https://guides.libraries.uc.edu/uchealth/databases

dstillman

They of course suggested I change my browser or use a different reference manager, neither of which are useful suggestions.

@mkostura: Well, again, though, you should confirm that the problem still occurs when simply using the proxied URL directly with the Zotero Connector disabled. If there's a problem in Zotero, we'll try to fix it, but nothing you've told us so far points to Zotero being relevant here. Zotero doesn't proxy anything — it just changes foo.com to foo-com.proxy.univ.edu in your browser.