Is there a PhilPapers translator?

simon50000
Hi,

Does anyone know if there should be / is / was a translator for PhilPapers? I've found discussions about it (http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/17645/%3FFocus%3D90096), but when I visit PhilPapers I get no icon. I've searched in my translators folder, and can't find any .js file.

PhilPapers can export a citation to Zotero, but it does this by presenting a .zot file for downloading, when you then have to manually import, and which then loads the citation in the "item" collection, which is a bit annoying.

Regards

Simon
  • adamsmith
    no, there is no translator - shouldn't be too hard to write, though, but someone has to do it.

    Which Zotero version are you using? In Firefox, the export to Zotero link will import directly and into the selected collection.
  • simon50000
    Okay, I may have a look at trying to make one.

    I'm using Chrome and Zotero Standalone, so the .zot files don't just import straight in for me.
  • adamsmith
    there is now a PhilPapers translator that should work really well (it uses the bibtex data, which is better than the .zot files - it has abstracts e.g.). Zotero will auto-update within 24hs or you can update immediately from the general tab of the ZOtero preferences.
    You will likely need to restart your browser for the translator to start working.
  • simon50000
    Thanks, it's great.
  • simon50000
    Hey,

    There is a small bug in this new translator: when clicking the folder icon on a multiple items page, items which are books were not included. But they were processed when it came to saving items, which meant that attempting to import any item which appeared after a book entry (although the book wouldn't appear in the list you saw) resulted in importing the item immediately above it in the list.

    The problem is with the XPath expression on line 49. It needs an extra '/' before the A tag because books have an extra SPAN around their title.

    Line 49 should thus be:

    var titles = ZU.xpath(doc, '//li/span[@class="citation"]//a[@class="articleTitle"]');

    That worked for me anyway, on Zotero Standalone.
  • adamsmith
    thanks - I'll try to get to this asap. Didn't have any books in my testing
  • simon50000
    Cool, I was testing with this:
    http://philpapers.org/browse/action-sentences
  • adamsmith
    sorry, took me forever - I did exactly what you suggested, this is fixed now.
  • ben.hjorth
    This translator is great to have - thanks to whoever wrote it! But FWIW, I'm finding I'm not getting all the data which is clearly available in the PhilPapers fields i.e. Abstract, ISBN. It also attaches a 'Snapshot' to the entry which gives no information and even the link back to Philpaper doesn't work (every Snapshot gives https://philpapers.org/rec/undefined).

    For example when I grabbed the data for this book (https://philpapers.org/rec/MARFTM) using the Chrome plugin, I got neither Abstract nor ISBN. Same deal for this one (https://philpapers.org/rec/BHADTP) and several others. I'm running Zotero 4.0.29.15 on Sierra 10.12.3.

    Granted this is pernicketty and PhilPapers is hardly the best database to be working with in the first place, but given that it does (try to) track citations, and often already has those data fields filled out anyway, it would be cool if it could be fine-tuned...? Sadly I don't possess the requisite knowledge to do it myself. Anyway thanks again.
  • adamsmith
    I'll fix the Snapshot and/or consider removing it and replace it with a link.

    We use the BibTeX data from Philpapers, which doesn't contain ISBNs. Could you ask them if they'd consider adding that information? While we _could_ scrape it from the page, it's much more elegant & stable to get it as part of the metadata. That's particularly true for ISBNs -- the abstract is in the HTML metatags on the page, so that's at least a bit more robust to scrape.
    They are aware of Zotero and have been pretty supportive in the past, so I think this is worth a try.
  • ben.hjorth
    Thanks! I'd be happy to ask them (by which I assume you mean PhilPapers) - will just send them an email? Or let me know if you mean something more specific than this.
  • adamsmith
    yes, just send and e-mail to the tune of "would you consider putting abstracts and ISBN in the BibTeX on pages such as "
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