EBSCOhost and PDFs

For some time now, I have been unable to get the Zotero Chrome plugin to save PDFs from EBSCOhost when using Edge. It worked probably a year ago, but I have noticed more recently that, while it creates the parent record, it gives a red X failure when attempting to store the PDF. It works fine in Chrome itself.

It would be nice if it worked in Edge--I know that Edge might not be a priority, but I thought I would mention it. The connector seems to work flawlessly in all other respects in Edge.
  • edited July 18, 2022
    Are you using the Chrome plugin in Edge? The Connector is available native for Edge, so you should definitely use that. Otherwise, can you submit two Debug IDs from Zotero client (not the connectors), one when saving the page with Edge, and another when saving with Chrome?
  • Thanks adomasven - I did add the native connector for Edge, but I had the same problem.

    However, there is progress. I found that the problem appears to be with using a proxy server. When I am onsite and using the campus network, the EBSCOhost connection is made directly (without the proxy server) and the connector is able to download and store the PDF file itself. When I am offsite and going through the proxy server, the PDF displays in the PDF viewer iFrame on the EBSCOhost page, and I'm able to use the Zotero Connector to create the parent item, but it won't download the PDF (I get the red X and need to click the "Save As" button in the PDF viewer). Interesting.
  • I'm readdressing this to say that the problem with EBSCOhost continues. When running through a university proxy server (e.g., https://web-s-ebscohost-com.ezpoxy.university.edu), Zotero Connector is able to identify the article from the page but cannot download the PDF file. I've tried this with two difference university libraries on multiple computers, and the behavior is always the same.

    Does anyone have any ideas on how I could make this work? As it is, I have to download the PDF separately and then add it to the reference. Not a problem at all for a few articles but when you need to store many in the course of a literature review, this is very time-consuming (especially since all the downloaded files come down from EBSCO with the same filename).
  • Do you get the PDF (through proxy) when you save from the "Detailed Record" view rather then looking at the PDF in an iframe?
  • Interesting. Yes, it works in the Detailed Record view, but not in the iframe.
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