Zotero doesn't retrieve bibliographic data from articles published in pdf format

Eric Weir
Using the Safari connector and Zotero Standalone I am unable to retrieve bibliographic data on a magazine article published in pdf format. The article is from the current issue of the magazine -- American Educator -- not in the archive of past issues. The article is not available as a web page.

I've tried saving the pdf, storing a copy in Zotero, and then doing a "retrieve metadata for pdf, but Zotero reports "Could not read text from pdf."

I located another article from the same issue of this magazine through Google Scholar. When I saved a copy in Zotero the bibliographic information was incomplete. [It had only the name of the publication and the year of publication.]

I'm guessing this is not possible, that in this situation the bibliographic data have to be entered manually.

is that right?

Thanks,
  • adamsmith
    edited November 7, 2011
    I'm guessing this is not possible, that in this situation the bibliographic data have to be entered manually.
    is that right?
    yes.
  • Eric Weir
    Thanks, Adam. I guess there's not much bibliographic software developers can do as long as there's no standard format for incorporating bibliographic data in pdfs.
  • adamsmith
    Mendeley tries to read meta-tags from pdfs - my understanding is that the results are, so far, utterly underwhelming (Mendeley also uses strategies similar to Zotero for getting pdf metadata, so its overall results are similar.)

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