Thanks Adam - I posted my question there and Mendeley directed me back to this discussion on Zotero!

Anyway - here's a RIS entry that does have the L1 tag:

TY - JOUR
T1 - Assessing professional competence: from methods to programmes.
A1 - van der Vleuten, Cees P M
A1 - Schuwirth, Lambert W T
Y1 - 2005/03//
KW - Clinical Competence
KW - Clinical Competence: standards
KW - Education, Medical, Undergraduate
KW - Education, Medical, Undergraduate: methods
KW - Learning
KW - Program Evaluation
KW - Reproducibility of Results
JF - Medical education
VL - 39
IS - 3
SP - 309
EP - 17
DO - 10.1111/j.1365-2929.2005.02094.x
UR - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15733167
L1 - file:///C:/Users/Anju/AppData/Local/Mendeley Ltd./Mendeley Desktop/Downloaded/van der Vleuten, Schuwirth - 2005 - Assessing professional competence from methods to programmes.pdf
N1 - Mainly focused on assessment tools but has some overarching points about assessment programmes that could relate to appraisal programmes
N2 - INTRODUCTION: We use a utility model to illustrate that, firstly, selecting an assessment method involves context-dependent compromises, and secondly, that assessment is not a measurement problem but an instructional design problem, comprising educational, implementation and resource aspects. In the model, assessment characteristics are differently weighted depending on the purpose and context of the assessment. EMPIRICAL AND THEORETICAL DEVELOPMENTS: Of the characteristics in the model, we focus on reliability, validity and educational impact and argue that they are not inherent qualities of any instrument. Reliability depends not on structuring or standardisation but on sampling. Key issues concerning validity are authenticity and integration of competencies. Assessment in medical education addresses complex competencies and thus requires quantitative and qualitative information from different sources as well as professional judgement. Adequate sampling across judges, instruments and contexts can ensure both validity and reliability. Despite recognition that assessment drives learning, this relationship has been little researched, possibly because of its strong context dependence. ASSESSMENT AS INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN: When assessment should stimulate learning and requires adequate sampling, in authentic contexts, of the performance of complex competencies that cannot be broken down into simple parts, we need to make a shift from individual methods to an integral programme, intertwined with the education programme. Therefore, we need an instructional design perspective. IMPLICATIONS FOR DEVELOPMENT AND RESEARCH: Programmatic instructional design hinges on a careful description and motivation of choices, whose effectiveness should be measured against the intended outcomes. We should not evaluate individual methods, but provide evidence of the utility of the assessment programme as a whole.
ER -

If those pdfs are found in the Mendeley organised folder, can one copy them and paste into Mendeley's downloaded folder? Or create a duplicate back-up version to test?

Other than that, I have been reading different threads about importing RIS/ Bibtex with pdfs still attached from Mendeley, could someone please consolidate this in a clear and easy to follow set of instructions for Windows (7)?

Here is the other related thread:
https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/28786/

But I've got to say it is going over my head.

I've got now [no thanks so Mendeley's curious self duplicating mysteries] 35,000+ database. If only one could combine the ease of retrieving metadata for Pdfs from Mendeley with Zotero's duplication function...

Anyhow, would be great if I could retain my Pdfs with the bibtex from Mendeley and have them imported intact into Zotero.

With about 13,000 pdfs, I can't really wait for Google Scholar's 50 pdf limit.

Ok maybe to keep things simple, I just need simple, step by step instructions to import my pdfs with bibtex/ ris into Zotero from Mendeley - but I dont want to mess up my Mendeley account - not just yet.

But what about the attached Pdfs from Mendeley? The key is that they come attached or can be automatically reattached with the relevant reference. Can one also do this in bibtex?

I have since started another thread to centralise ideas for migrating from Mendeley to Zotero.

https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/32500/migrating-from-mendeley-to-zotero/

This has got to be the most EXCELLENT outcome I have experienced in months and months of frustration with managing my 35,000+ database.

So I followed your instruction:

1. Export library as RIS from Mendeley (go to "all documents", select all (ctrl+a) and the click "Export" from the File Menu. Select .ris as the filetype.

2. Import that file to Zotero (click on import in the gears menu and select the file exported from Mendeley.


The most important thing is WHERE one saves the RIS file. I saved it in my Mendeley organised folder, where my renamed pdfs are outputted by Mendeley.

Then I import the RIS file into Zotero - and it WORKS!!!!!! THANK YOU :-)

[Finally an end in sight for these crazy months of endless Mendeley bugs!]

This is the best of all worlds based on the following workflow:

[1] Mendeley batch pdf metadata retrieval ------>
[2] Zotero's automatic duplicates control & search ------> [perhaps for some]
[3] Endnote's bibliographic formatting


With such a huge database, I am afraid there is no "Swiss Army" knife bibliographic management software. But maybe now, there are hybrid approaches to enhance one's productivity [like hands up who have spent more time fixing one's bibliographic software than doing the research and writing itself? Calling to all Mendeley users...]

(Continued on the thread linked to by TTLP)

what is the exact message you're getting? There's typically no batch re-connect, but if you tell us what exactly you're seeing, we'll be able to say more.

you would also get that message if file syncing hadn't completed. That seems by far the most likely scenario for what's happening.

(@Dan - shouldn't that be added to the error message? Given that in 9 out of 10 cases this is due to files not syncing rather than moved/deleted files, this seems confusing).

If you have a completed sync on both machines with no errors (no red or yellow symbol next to the round green arrow), files should be synced. If not, see
http://www.zotero.org/support/kb/files_not_syncing

[Thread redirected to another forum].

Yeah, I don't know what it is with APA and profs. There is no real world scenario where being able to follow APA to the letter is important.

But as long as you make sure to keep all your titles in sentence case in Zotero http://www.zotero.org/support/kb/sentence_casing APA style should be flawless.
You need to remove issue numbers for continuously paginated journals, though. Not sure how Endnote handles that, but I don't really see how it can be automated.

you mean some citations generated by Mendeley, some by Zotero? Yeah, I could see that causing problems, but you'd have to replace one or the other anyway.

I'm not sure why you consider that a bug - you'll get chaos when you mix citation managers in a document either way.
edit: and obviously if you want to use Zotero anyway, you can just remove Mendeley field codes and replace the citations with Zotero citations.

@fbennett - that Mendeley and Zotero citations in the same document can create problems. I'm not sure I'd classify this as "known", but given that Mendeley uses, to large extent, old Zotero code, I'm not surprised this doesn't work well.

Sorry - for my layman's terminology. Known bug retracted. Just that it is not easy to decipher whether problem is my system alone: the "is it me or not" problem.