How to create a public, curated by a person/group, bibliography

My research is in transportation sector energy use and emissions. I believe my Zotero based bibliography is valuable to some researchers in the community. With the spirit of giving back to the community, or at least helping those just starting their research career in this area, I would like to:

(1) Provide public access to my entire collection. Thus anyone, without my permission, should be able to view, search, copy, and export my collection (in part or entirety). But no editing/deleting rights.

(2) Invite other like-minded researchers in my domain to join this initiative and merge their own Zotero collections with mine, or start by downloading my collection and then adding to it. These few people will have editing rights.

I think I can achieve (1) by going to Home > Settings > Privacy and selecting "Publish entire library." Is that correct? Is there another, better way? If someone downloaded everything today, how do they keep up with the adds/edits I do on a weekly basis?

What about (2)? I could create a group, but how will group members sync between group library and personal libraries?
  • I will let others provide information about the "how too do it".

    Are you thinking of including full text? I would be concerned about copyright issues and intellectual property rights. I think that it is mostly OK to share within a private group but a public group is another matter.
  • edited November 27, 2014
    I changed the settings at Home > Settings > Privacy and it worked as expected. There are a couple questions about (1):

    (1.1) How do I share just my entire collection, and not reveal the sub-collections and items assigned to them?

    (1.2) Many of the items are originally created from subscribed databases, such as Web of Science. By making my collection public, am I violating any copyright issues? I attach files only by their path, so NO files or full-texts are being shared. I would like to share "notes", some of which could be highlighted text in the PDFs that was extracted by Zotfile.
  • edited November 27, 2014
    DWL-SDCA, my previous message was posted without having read your question/concern. Just to confirm, I will not be sharing full text.
  • (3) How do I set up a one-way sync? I want my local library to update my online, public, library during a sync operation. I do NOT want the online library to update my local library.
  • What you want is probably a public group with open membership and editing restricted to group administrators. You can then assign administrator rights to people you trust to contribute to the group.

    As for keeping your private library in sync with your group library, you can't. The idea is that you simply use the group library as you would use a collection in your private library.

    Syncing would work as usual. You don't have to worry about syncing down (from zotero.org) unwanted changes, because no one but administrators can make those changes.
  • edited November 27, 2014
    "As for keeping your private library in sync with your group library, you can't."

    So, each time I add an item to my private library, I would need to also add it to my group library? I could live with that, may be. How about when I edit an item in my private library that also exists in the group library? I want edits made in my private library to automatically appear in my group library (local and online). On the other hand, changes made by administrators should reflect only in my group library collection but do not automatically reach my private library, even if the items exists in both places.

    Basically, my private library is sacrosanct and under no condition do I want unauthorized changes reaching it.
  • Currently, the items in "My Library" and in any groups are entirely separate. You need to add them separately and editing an item in one doesn't affect the other, no matter which direction.

    There is some talk about improving this, but that's the status quo.

    So, specifically:
    So, each time I add an item to my private library, I would need to also add it to my group library?
    correct, though you could obviously do that by dragging from your library.
    How about when I edit an item in my private library that also exists in the group library? I want edits made in my private library to automatically appear in my group library (local and online).
    nope, you need to edit them in both places.
    On the other hand, changes made by administrators should reflect only in my group library collection but do not automatically reach my private library, even if the items exists in both places.
    no concerns there.
  • Thanks. I noticed that once an item is added to the group, I cannot edit it in private library and then drag/drop to update the group entry. I have to actually go and make the same edits in the group entry. That sound right?

    Further, if I create a new child item, such as extracted notes, for a primary item in the private library, those cannot be drag/drop to the same primary item in the group library. Is the only option to delete the main item in the group library and re-add it?

    It seems the group library idea won't work for my intended goal here. Unless I move my entire collection to the group library and then make all future updates there. But then the risk is that the group library syncs with the online version and now I cannot control "incoming" updates like I could with my private collection.

    Did I miss anything?
  • Thanks. I noticed that once an item is added to the group, I cannot edit it in private library and then drag/drop to update the group entry. I have to actually go and make the same edits in the group entry. That sound right?
    correct. That's the most likely thing to change soon-ish. It's a bit awkward as it is right now.
    Further, if I create a new child item, such as extracted notes, for a primary item in the private library, those cannot be drag/drop to the same primary item in the group library. Is the only option to delete the main item in the group library and re-add it?
    correct. That or copy the content of the note over via clipboard.
  • edited November 28, 2014
    I am quite torn between the options of making my private library public versus having an open membership public group. The former allows me to maintain a fully updated online version of my private library. The latter allows other Zotero users in my field to contribute. Those were the two main objectives :)

    adamsmith, can you provide a sense of when some of these issues might get fixed? Collaborative tools will also increase Zotero's adoption. For example, if my library is worth something, dozens of researchers in my field, especially those that do not use any reference management tool, would adopt Zotero because they get a head-start.

    Anyway, for the moment, I set my library to public:
    https://www.zotero.org/gurdas/items/

    I would appreciate if you can spend a couple minutes to browse this as a "public user" and check if there are any settings I need to edit. Do you see something amiss? Any advice for me? I want all the IP-safe information to be public, including my notes, but do NOT want anyone but me to be able to edit/delete anything.

    (1) The "Cite Item" tool in top-right has only a dozen or so style options? Why not all the styles from the Zotero style repository?

    (2) The "Library Settings" tool in top-right does not allow Extra field, which I use for Google Scholar Citation. Any workaround?

    (3) Is the Index (Zotero Firefox > Preferences > Search) also synced?

    (4) Can I create a welcome message/banner for visitors about the research domain for this library?

    (5) I love that there is a RSS feed. What gets broadcasted and how often? I might make edits to my private library 10-20 times a day and it is on auto-sync. That does not mean 10-20 feeds per day to followers, right?
  • adamsmith, can you provide a sense of when some of these issues might get fixed?
    not reliably. The thing that will change fastest is behavior via drag&drop. I hope that'd be within a year. Everything else will almost certainly take longer if it happens at all.


    Your library is fine, you can't actually set this up in any way for people to be able to access files let alone to edit items.

    1) Because it'd be unmanageable in terms of GUI (the API makes all the styles available, though).
    2) No, sorry.
    3) Yes
    4) Not for personal libraries, no. It is possible on a group's landing page.
    5) I think it's only new items (including notes) and not edits, but yes, that does mean if you add a lot, you'll get a high volume in the feed. Feeds are available for any given subset, including specific collections and tags.

    It's possible to use the Zotero API to host your bibliography on a different page, as e.g.
    http://www.firstworldwarstudies.org/bibliography.php
    for more customizability.

    I wouldn't expect any of these things to change any time soon.
  • Qs (1) -> (4) Okay and thanks.

    (5) What if I disable auto-sync on intensive update days and sync manually? Thus, if I added 50 items during the day, but synced only once at the end of my session, will that mean one feed for that day showing all updates or 50 feeds with one for each new item?

    (6) The search bar in top-right does not have the same behavior as my Zotero Firefox. For example, for the "Title, Creator, Year" setting, if my search query is "USEPA MOVES", in my local version it is showing items that have both of these words, which basically are items that have USEPA as creator and MOVES in the title. For the online version, it shows no items found.

    (7) The search bar does not have the same options, too. The "All Fields & Tags" and "Everything" options are missing, but there is a "Full Text" option that might be same as Everything?

    The API option sounds interesting. Not sure if I have the skills to set it up. I will study what it needs and it might be just what I wanted. Thanks for mentioning it!
  • 5) no, the feed is unrelated to how you sync.
    6/7) that's right, the search options are more limited online. I thought the title, creator, year thing had been fixed at some point, but apparently it's not and the searches are in any one of those categories. I'd expect that also means that full text searches _just_ the full text and not also all fields & tags the way it does in the client.

    API: you wouldn't need to do this manually with the API. E.g. the First World War people use
    https://wordpress.org/plugins/zotpress/
  • (5) if you don't sync, then feeds don't get updated, so yes. Though I'm not sure that you're thinking of this right. Generally, with feeds, what matters is how often you check the feed, rather than how often you update it. The check frequency is something determined by the other party, so they're completely in control about how often they see updates. You shouldn't really have to worry about updating your library every minute. If they want to only get an update once a day, they should only check the feed once a day.

    (6) looks like a bug to me

    (7) full text is supposed to search contents of PDFs, so in a sense it will also search all metadata fields, since those should be present in the PDF. I'm not sure that it specifically looks in fields like extra or in note attachment. In general, the website is not the same as the client in many ways and is not meant to be a replacement.
  • edited November 28, 2014
    (5) I was thinking along the lines of feed output style. One feed item with a summary of the 50 updates versus 50 feed items one for each update are the same information, just that the latter is (to me) more overwhelming. Something similar to my daily versus weekly digest for Yahoogroups. The "reader" controls how often they get the feeds, but what the feeds look like is controlled by the originator, in this case the Zotero website. Right?

    (6) Can this be fixed soon?

    (7) Okay.

    (8) New Q: How about this modus operandi regarding the "public group with open membership and editing restricted to group administrators" -> Once a week, I and any other admins, delete every item contributed by SELF from the group library and re-copy self's entire private collection in to the group library. (8a) Can I separate items created by me in the group library versus other admins, so that I delete only my entries before copy-pasting newer versions of the same items plus any new items; (8b) Wonder how long it takes for the copy-paste from private library to group library for a library of 1500 primary items and 2-3 child per primary item.
  • 5) Zotero controls the feed, but I doubt they'll add a digest option (something I've never seen as an option for an Atom Feed), but I think a good feed reader might be customizable or people can work with a web hook like IFTTT.

    8) Not a great way to handle this, no.
    One obviously problem is that you can't see currently who added an item in the client. That's only available online (will change with new sync infrastructure, but that'll take some time still).

    Beyond this, everyone who is synced to that library will essentially do a full sync of 2k items every week then, which isn't a great user experience. It also puts undue stress on the Zotero servers as a side effect.
  • (6) ? just in case you missed it

    (8) You are right; sorry, I was not thinking of the end-user experience. Another alternative will be to sort items by added/updated and delete-copy only those that have been added/update since last one week. That will reduce the load but I wonder if even this is okay. When you become a member of a group, it shows up in your Zotero client. Can the Word citations come directly from the group bibliography or do they have to come from the private collection first? If users directly cite from the group library, and if I delete-update an item in the group, they might have broken citations in the Word document when they refresh?

    I create an open public group with just 15 items:
    https://www.zotero.org/groups/transportation_fuels_and_emissions

    Can someone here become a member? I'll set you as admin, after which please contribute 4-5 items (any topic). I'd like to test some behaviors regarding items contributed by admins.
  • 6) I don't know. That's fcheslack's territory.

    8) I don't have time to help you test, but you should feel free to create a separate account for testing, no one will mind.
  • 6) All searches via the API are currently phrase searches, so it won't find individual words separately. And All Fields & Tags mode hasn't yet been implemented.
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