Import articles from RIS file

imoradi · October 13, 2011

I like zotero but there are a few problems that have to be solved before moving to this package. First i think there should be possiblity to add a citation key instead of what you automatically put as name_first-word_year. Secondly it is really weak in importing from websites. I think you should improve it so that when import something directly from scopus, etc we do nto need to make changes. 3. it should be possible to search articles by title, etc from internet and add them to zotero. You have have a look at citeulike and see how those functions work.

-IM

ajlyon · October 13, 2011

If you can be a little more specific with your concerns with importing from websites, I can address the issues you're experiencing. In many cases, we're limited to the metadata that journals and other content providers offer us, but I'm always glad to refine site and import translators. Just give some sample URLs and specify what's wrong with the data.

As for citation keys, note that you can modify the key generation procedure by modifying the BibTeX export translator, which can be found in the translators directory in the Zotero data directory. Slightly old info here: http://www.curiousjason.com/zoterotobibtex.html

A citation key field will likely be added in a coming version of Zotero, but I don't know how long that will be (current discussion: https://github.com/ajlyon/zotero-bits/issues/24 and old ticket: https://www.zotero.org/trac/ticket/763)

imoradi · October 13, 2011

Thanks for the info. It is great that you will add a citation key.
If you try to add an article from for example AGU or IEEE website. Zotero just grabs the article name and then we have to manually add other items. One way is to download the citation and then improt the RIS key but that really takes time if you need to add a lot of refernces. Another feature could be to import articles from other refs managers like citeulike. I mean to import both attached files and the citations together not to export citations from citeulike and then import them here because we loose the attachments.

adamsmith · October 13, 2011

IEEExplore and AGU both import complete citation information into Zotero with one click. If you don't know how that works, read or watch some of the getting started documentation here:
http://www.zotero.org/support/quick_start_guide
in general I get the sense that you're not very familiar with Zotero yet - I suggest you spend a week or two using Zotero and learning what it can actually do before making feature requests.