I have a related problem, in that zotero does not seem to read some of the RIS fields. In particular I am trying to import an RIS format file produced by Reference Manager that uses the L1 field to point to a local pdf file. zotero seems to ignore this.

Many items data are not imported (Name of database, Language, URL, etc.)DB - Name of Database
LA - Language
UR - URL

Until very recently, DB and LA were not part of the RIS spec. They are now, though & so the Zotero translator should be improved. Properly-formatted URLs should already be imported (either to the URL field or as attachments) when listed under the 'UR' tag. Have you tried using working URLs?

some are not placed in the right fields (Type of Article is populated in DOI, Issue in Extra)M1 - Issue
M3 - Type of Article

The original RIS specs defined the M* fields as miscellaneous. Thus, there is poor agreement in how they are used in the wild. Zotero treats M1 and M2 as extra & M3 as a DOI (the latter is presumably because this is where one or more large data supplier puts DOIs (these didn't exist when the RIS spec was first created)). The current RIS documentation defines M3 as the "type of work" for journal articles. Perhaps we can check whether the contents of M3 are a doi using the algorithm we already use to detect dois. If they're not, it isn't clear to me where "type of work" should go in Zotero's schema. In Extra?

In the current spec, the behavior of M1 varies based on resource type and is not documented for journal articles! It is used for a magazine issue, though. Both the old and current RIS specs state 'IS' is preferred for issue. So, I consider this to be an Endnote export bug. I think it is a relatively new bug. We could potentially work around it by checking if the value of M1 is numeric and also that both IS and CP are null & then using it as an issue number.

In particular I am trying to import an RIS format file produced by Reference Manager that uses the L1 field to point to a local pdf file. zotero seems to ignore this.

L1 will be imported if it uses a URI that firefox is able to resolve. You may have to transform Endnote's quirky relative links into absolute file paths for this to work.

no there hasn't. I know Aurimas has thought quite a bit about the RIS translator, so it'd be happy if he'd take that when he gets a chance. CN e.g. looks like it shouldn't be a problem.

Hi! I am using Zotero 3.0.11 on Firefox 16.0.2 on a Windows 7 Professional PC, 64 bits. We are using the RIS format to import reference data into Zotero from our web based application (news archives). We support exporting using text files, the clipboard or unApi and all of this used to work. Here is an example of a typical RIS file content:

TY - NEWS
AU - Tommy Chouinard|Paul Journet
TI - Le "bouillant" Blanchet à l'Environnement
PY - 2012/12/05
JF - Le Nouvelliste (Trois-Rivières)
DP - CEDROM-SNi
DB - biblioeureka
C1 - news·20121205·NV·0006
ER -

TY - ELEC
TI - Aucune surprise
PY - 2012/12/05
JF - La Presse (site web)
DP - CEDROM-SNi
DB - biblioeureka
C1 - news·20121205·CY·4600994
ER -


I even tried to simplify the content to the following, without any success:

TY - NEWS
AU - Teo
TI - Test
PY - 2012/12/05
ER -


Looking at the error report window, I see a whole bunch of things similar to the following: [JavaScript Error: "no element found" {file: "moz-nullprincipal:{51a5271b-aeb1-4f58-8bc7-576b55f43682}" line: 18}].

Is the format still working? I am looking to add an URL to the RIS file and so far I am stuck with this problem.

Thank you for your prompt answer.

Yes, I tried on a second computer as well, a similar machine. I now tried an import from the clipboard of what I just posted and there is no problem. I just found my problem: I am using an XSLT transform and I insert extra spaces in front of all the fields, except for TY and ER, but this indentation was eliminated in my post. So, I guess that the extra spaces that used to work they don't anymore: I will just have to upgrade my XSL file.

There is no problem for me to change the XSL stylesheet: this way I only have to deliver that file, instead of the whole application. Thank you for your help!

CY (city) for newspaper references. I sometimes filled in this field in Endnote to differentiate papers of the same name (ie The Herald in multiple cities)

Strange. This should be importing into Place. I'll look more into this.

VL (Volume) in the newspaper option in Endnote.

Zotero does not have a Volume field for newspapers, which is why this ended up in the note. Looks like there is some discussion of including volume and issue for newspapers (see here). Perhaps it will make it into Zotero 3.1.

Translated author field in the newspaper option in Endnote.

Currently Zotero does not support translated author names. If you do need these, you may be interested in the Multilingual Zotero (MLZ)

PB (Publisher) - in the web page option in Endnote.

I'm not sure what would be considered a publisher for a web page. What kind of web pages are you trying to cite? Perhaps a different item type is more appropriate here.

CY (Conference name) in the conference paper option in Endnote.

CY should correspond to conference location. T2 should be the conference name, which should be correctly imported. Double-check that this is entered correctly in your EndNote library. Conference location does not currently have a corresponding Zotero field, but there is some discussion on including it. Currently Place in Zotero corresponds to Publisher Place (T2).

SP (Description) in the web page option in Endnote.

We can probably map this to Abstract if abstract is not provided. There is an Abstract field in EndNote for website, so I'm wondering what information you were putting in Description vs Abstract.

Edit: Also, thank you for the feedback.

Some of those things will be curious to my Masters, which was on social movements and included having to cite campaign ephemera. So description was used then the other info did not adequately tell my which item that reference was for (to save going to the web page to check).

So did you have anything in the Abstract field then? I'm just wondering what the best place would be to put this. As mentioned above, it can go into Abstract if Abstract in EndNote was blank. It could also go into the Extra field. Or it can be attached as a separate note. I'll have to think about that. I'm not sure what the designation for the Description field is in EndNote. They might talk about it in their manual.

On conference name this is from the txt file:[...]

So that looks right. It's just that Zotero currently does not support conference location.

On publisher for a webpage, I sometimes use that when the webpage is for something that is really part of a larger organisation (this can occur with political parties etc). I also used it for site like The Australian War Memorial, which is really a Commonwealth Government published site. This means the reference indicates this was an official government 'publication'.

This sounds reasonable. I don't immediately see any discussion about this on the forums. Perhaps @adamsmith can comment on whether this is planned for future development or not. It all mostly depends on whether this information is used when creating citations.

Also, I got this a few times for thesis:
The following values have no corresponding Zotero field:
VL - Master of Arts and Social Sciences (Research)
ID - 396

In Zotero "degree" would go into the Type field. EndNote appears to provide both Degree and Type fields. I think it might be more reasonable to put Degreee (VL) into Type and if that's not provided, we can put Thesis Type (M3). Any thoughts on that @adamsmith?

But I'm certainly willing to be convinced that we need a publisher field for webpages.

I don't have any authoritative sources on hand (though I see some are available in my library), but it looks like at least the MLA style requires "publisher".

I'm basing this on http://www.easybib.com and some university-published guides on the web (e.g. http://writing.wisc.edu/Handbook/DocMLAWorksCited_ElecSources.html)