CiNii author names consistently reversed

DWL-SDCA
The English side of the CiNii site consistently has last names before first names. However, the translator consistently reverses them. This requires a lot of hand editing. This is, at least, the case for Latin characters. I have provided a few examples below, but all of the 300-plus articles I've imported have the names reversed. (When I hover over the address bar icon if shows that the CiNii translator is being used.) This problem occurs when I am logged in to the site and also when I am not logged in. I'm using the latest versions of Zotero standalone and MLZ (on different machines).

Also, there seems to be a problem with the name import where the authors' names on the site are presented in two versions -- both Latin and other characters. The importer preference seems to be for the non-Latin characters. My own preference is the Latin version of names. However, I wonder if it would be possible to have both versions.

I have tried both the standard stand alone and also the multilingual Zotero within Firefox. Is the problem my own settings or is this something that needs to be changed in the translator.

Examples:

http://ci.nii.ac.jp/naid/130000253802
http://ci.nii.ac.jp/naid/10028153106
http://ci.nii.ac.jp/naid/130000302028
(I particularly draw your attention to the name arrangement for Schipper in the 130000302028 link above.)

Thanks
  • adamsmith
    while that's theoretically fixable in Zotero, I'm not sure it should be.
    Their bibtex is clearly wrong:
    author="SOEMANTRI Satryo and PUJA Wiratmaja and BUDIWANTORO Bagus and PARWATA Made and SCHIPPER D. J.",

    I would be a bit reluctant to fix this in Zotero just to see it break again when they correct their data issues. So as a first step, please report the problem to CiNii - let's see if ajlyon has an opinion on how to handle this.
  • DWL-SDCA
    edited January 5, 2012
    If a change is made to the translator, it would also be good to change the names from all upper case to mixed case.

    I wrote to CiNii in mid-December and received a very polite but non-committal reply with no acknowledgment of the data problem.

    I keep encountering problems with reversed names (I brought this up on another thread concerning ScienceDirect.)

    I understand (and agree with) the reluctance of making, possibly temporary, Zotero changes to compensate for publisher data problems that may eventually be fixed.

    This is, however, another example of how splendid it would be to be able to have a Zotero tool to selectively reverse incorrectly placed forenames and lastnames. While I rarely use the move-up function, I'm finding a frequent need to correct the name placement.
  • adamsmith
    I agree - I've seen more and more examples of that - I'll dig up the old thread and file an issue as soon asap.
  • fbennett
    edited January 5, 2012
    CiNii is pretty much a disaster zone as far as data quality is concerned. They seem to pipe through whatever content they receive from supplying authors and institutions, without performing any sort of centralized quality control. It's a shame, because a full-multilingual data store like this would have much greater value if it were properly administered.

    The experimental multilingual Zotero version was originally developed as a submission to a CiNii API contest. Two days before the contest deadline, they changed the format of names in their RDF from "Smith, John" to "Smith John", without any explanation. Given the irregularity of capitalization in the data, this creates nice challenges like VAN DYCKE Annelies, encourages workarounds like Schmadel Judith von, and makes it impossible to scan for entries that completely ignore their input guidelines. Into the bargain it makes it impossible to distinguish personal and institutional authors. I pointed out these issues, and like DWL-SDCA I received a "Thank you for your feedback" reply, and that was it. I'm sure the CiNii staff have many fine qualities, but listening is not one of them.

    For untended sites like this, making fixups more convenient in the client will certainly be worthwhile. When I can get to it, I'll look at introducing a pull-down menu option for name element switching in the multilingual client, and submit a patch for review.
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