[Item Type] Thesis: DOI will be lost

ahuebl

Hi,

I am trying to import my PhD thesis via DOI (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3266820) to Zotero. This step works well and gets imported as "Journal Article".

If I am editing the item to change "Item Type" to "Thesis" I get the warning:
Are you sure you want to change the item type?
The following fields will be lost: DOI

Do you think it's possible to keep the DOI for the "Thesis" type? More and more universities publish theses in the open and many people decide to self-publish their thesis on services like Zenodo. Keeping that primary identifier for such works in the Zotero entries would be splendid :)

Thanks a lot,
Axel

Zotero version: 5.0.96.2 on Ubuntu 20.04

bwiernik

@dstillman Is there any possibility of using the new code for Mendeley import that saves invalid fields to Extra when changing item types?

dstillman

That's not related to Mendeley — that's been in place for translators for a while — but we could consider using it here. I think we'd want it to be a temporary fix, though. Once we've done field updates, I'm not sure we'd want to continue polluting Extra instead of giving a proper warning that the field isn't valid for the new type (which would also imply that it wouldn't be used in citations).

(@ahuebl, to explain, DOI will be available on all item types in a future version, and for now you add DOI: 10.5281/… to Extra to get it to show up properly in citations.)

bwiernik

I think for at least the time being, moving them to Extra would be preferable.

Even after adding new fields, I’m not sure Zotero will necessarily have covered all of the citation bases (e.g., is a Format/Medium field going to be added to all item types, which is needed for many types of APA citations). I think continuing to use Extra until a capacity for custom CSL field mapping is available would be good.