BMC Translator - Handling of Article Numbers

marianschmidt
Hi, I just imported various Items from Biomed Central, e.g. from the BMC Nephrology journal. It appears that the translator mixes up Journal Issue and Page Number Fields when importing the items. For replication see: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2369/6/11

Maybe this is because in these open access journals (probably online only) each article is treated as an own issue and no page numbers are used for citation.
  • marianschmidt
    As an addition, here is what another BMC online only journal says about citing it's own articles: http://www.hqlo.com/about
    ---
    Articles in Health and Quality of Life Outcomes should be cited in the same way as articles in a traditional journal. Because articles are not printed, they do not have page numbers; instead, they are given a unique article number.

    Article citations follow this format:

    Authors: Title. Health Qual Life Outcomes [year], [volume number]:[article number].

    e.g. Roberts LD, Hassall DG, Winegar DA, Haselden JN, Nicholls AW, Griffin JL: Increased hepatic oxidative metabolism distinguishes the action of Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor delta from Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor gamma in the Ob/Ob mouse. Health Qual Life Outcomes 2009, 1:115.

    refers to article 115 from Volume 1 of the journal.
    ---
  • marianschmidt
    Okay, after reading this post: http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/11177/crossref-publisheritem-articlenumber/ it seems as if treating an article number as a page number is common practice. Still there would remain the problem, that the BMC translator enters a 1 as issue number athough this field should remain empty because the journal doesn't have issues.
  • aurimas
    The issue number (1) is supplied by BMC as issue number. That's why Zotero puts it there. If the issue is supposed to be blank, BMC should not supply the issue number in the metadata.

    This should be reported to BMC. Zotero retrieves metadata from the <meta.../> fields in the page <head>
  • DWL-SDCA
    edited November 9, 2012
    Although this isn't quite the same as issue numbering in an ePub, a similar situation exists with some ScienceDirect journals when there is one issue per volume. Sometimes, the metadata contains a zero for the issue number. This has been going on for a couple of years. I've recently seen journal articles that cite these one-issue volume articles (Vancouver style) with the issue number "(0)". I have no idea why they made the decision to use zero for an issue number.
  • aurimas
    I think we can fix this where issue number is 0. I don't think there is any journal that has a legitimate issue numbered 0. Please do correct me if I'm wrong.
  • DWL-SDCA
    I will get a print copy of Accident Analysis and Prevention and let you know if that contains a printed issue number of zero. That will need to wait until Friday.
  • DWL-SDCA
    I just checked and there are some BMC journal volumes with multiple issues. Maybe having a (1) isn't so bad.
  • DWL-SDCA
    I have tested the Issue=0 issue with ScienceDirect using the Elsevier journal Accident Analysis and Prevention. Print and pdf versions list no issue number for single-issue volumes. However, the ScienceDirect export for RIS, RefWorks-Direct, and BibTeX formats all provide an issue number "0".

    Web of Science had until recently listed volumes 46, 47, and 48 as issue number 0 but that has been changed to no issue information.
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