Hit and Miss downloads for EBSCO pdfs

p125805
Hi,

I've just downloaded Zotero and am testing it out. Very impressed so far.

I have found that sometimes it will download the attached PDF file with an EBSCO article, and sometimes it will fail. This does not seem to be on an article by article basis, as I have tried re-downloading the same articles multiple times - sometimes it downloads the file and sometimes it doesn't.

I've tried it both with the chrome extension and the firefox extension and found the same thing.

Do you think this is an internet connectivity issue (though I have not been experiencing any other issues) or something to do with accessing the database via a University proxy?

Thanks for your help.

Brian
  • adamsmith
    hard to say. Are you downloading a lot of PDFs at once when that happens or individual articles?
    I'd expect problems with PDF download when accessing EBSCO through a proxy while standalone is running (no matter whether you're using Firefox or Chrome) is that the case?
  • p125805
    It happens both with individual articles and bulk downloads.

    Yes, standalone was running. How does this affect the download process?

    I'm having trouble accessing the database at the moment but will test with standalone closed once I can get into it again.

    Thank you for your reply.
  • adamsmith
    standalone was running. How does this affect the download process?
    It's a bit complicated, but basically when Standalone is running, the request for the file download come from Standalone and if the file is hosted on a different domain than the page you're importing from (EBSCO hosts PDFs at content.ebscohost.com) authentication via the proxy doesn't work.
  • p125805
    That makes sense. I note that the firefox extension offers to save proxy settings too. Thank you so much for your help.

    I've tested now using firefox with standalone closed. It has worked a number of times now both for single article and bulk downloads.

    I turned back on standalone to confirm that it was causing the problem and, yes, the pdf downloads still fail when it is open.

    I was having access issues with the proxy server earlier which may also have been interfering with some of the downloads. That might explain why, for example, 2 out of 7 in a bulk download worked.

    Thank you again for your help.

    Regards,

    Brian
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