Unable to save an article from APA Psych Net

NicoleTrefzger · June 14, 2021

When trying to save an article from APA Psychnet, I get "An error occurred saving with APA PsycNET. Attempting to save using Embedded Metadata instead."

I am using the newest Firefox and Zotera versions.

Do you have any suggestions?

bwiernik · June 14, 2021

Can you give an example URL?

(PsycNET has a long history of making little changes to its layout that breaks all sorts of tools, including Zotero import, and sometimes even the delivery of the site itself.)

DWL-SDCA · June 14, 2021

I recommend this for capturing metadata from PsycNET. Although it is a multi-step process and requires capturing articles one-by-one it has always worked and isn't affected by limits to downloads.

1. From the Table of Contents webpage of the volume/issue that contains the article, copy the DOI, paste it into Zotero's Magic Wand, and have Zotero work its magic.

2. On PsycNET click on the abstract link for the article to expand the contents title to include the abstract text. Copy and paste the abstract to your Zotero record.

3. If you have access to the full text of the article, download the PDF file and drag the file to your Zotero record.

Else, even if you or your institution has a subscription or license to download the article you will soon be confronted with a Captcha for access limits.

edit: Even when the PsycNET site is rendering a garbled webpage, you can often read enough of the page to find the DOI to paste into Zotero but you may or may not be able to get to the abstract or the PDF link. The PsycNET website is terribly fragile. Also, if you have webpage rendering issues when using Firefox try Chrome and vice-versa.