Entire Journals

I would like to be able to enter an entire journal as an entry. So far only individual journal articles can be documented. In doing an historical review I have found it useful to document the publication period of older journals, but there is no document category for Journal. This would also be useful for special issues.

I've searched the discussion forums, but couldn't find any discussion of this.
  • yeah - I think there is one very old thread on this, but I wouldn't know how to find that either - I think generally there is a great reluctance to add new item types.
    What exactly would you need an entire journal to include? And does it need to be citable?
    i.e. if you just create it as a Book entry - what fields are you missing?

    Also, once hierarchical item type arrive - which, imo, seems to be rather distant future, this could be taken up again.
  • Thank you.
    I had used the search engine at the top of the page, but everything it found seemed concerned with citation styles for specific journals. (I never realized there was so many specific variations requiring entirely new styles.)

    I will use the Book item type for now as it does have the requisite fields.

    I wouldn't use my Zotero entry concerning a journal series for a citation, but I would use an entry on a Special Issue (as opposed to individual contributions to that issue) for a citation.

    I'm still learning all that Zotero can do. I only recently realized the ability to change the field for author to editor as I started entering my ridiculously large thesis bibliography. I wish I'd started with Zotero 4 years ago...
  • Being the one who started the related discussion referred to above, I strongly support mdfurney in her “request”. I do still think “journal/magazine/newspaper issue” is a helpful and necessary item type (and could be introduced before hierarchical items are implemented).

    Like mdfurney, I would like to quote an issue of a journal or a magazine (e.g. for the above mentioned special issues, or to state which issues of a journal were included in an analysis) or sometimes just to have it in my database (e.g. add note “nothing relevant for me in this issue” – after all, Zotero is not a bibliographical program but a “research tool”). For the latter it is probably sufficient to use the item type “book”, still it’s not very neat. But for the former the fields are not right, which would show up in a bibliography. With an item type “journal/magazine/newspaper issue” it would be possible to define the right output in CSL.
  • Hi, this post is several years old and I am having the same issue. I would like to cite a special issue of a journal as a whole body of work. I don't see a way to do that currently. Is there an option that I have missed? I saw older posts on this from 2008, but they were very dismissive of the issue. The fact is that it is often useful to cite Special Issues as whole works (reflections of development in bodies of scholarship), similar to how one would use an edited volume of a book and cite both chapters and the work as a whole. Has there been any development on this issue? Thanks!
  • Currently there's nothing you can do beyond what I suggest above.

    We have very specific plans to include entire periodicals as item types:
    https://github.com/avram/zotero-bits/issues/23

    And a general awareness of the need to cite special issues:
    https://github.com/avram/zotero-bits/issues/36
    though nothing very concrete on how to procede on that.

    The first of the two is hopefully going to happen this year, though no promises. The 2nd one I don't know. Could be at the same time, could also take longer.
  • Ok, it's been a year since the last post (and six since the OP), has there been any action on this; I'd really really like it.
  • nope, nothing new. 5.0 will go into beta very soon, and when it's released we can actually start implementing new item types.
  • I also would want to be able to reference an entire journal or magazine issue, basically because I sometimes cite part of the editorial text for example, or sometimes the entire issue as an example of a subject being discussed at a certain moment in history.

    If I do as Adamsmith suggests and choose Book type, I'm missing, the "issue" field so I can write the number or the issue, right now I have to write it in the Title field.
    If I add a "series editor", there appears a "series number" field which I'm unsure what it means..

    Also I would reeeaaaally appreciate hierarchical item types.. Makes little sense having 30 articles from a same magazine listed as different items!! Even if I use the "related" field, it makes it very difficult to manage.

    Any help is welcome!
  • edited July 30, 2016
    "I would like to be able to enter an entire journal as an entry" --> I would welcome this as well. Specially useful for thematic issues, when the volume has a title. So probably it will come in the next months. That's good. Thanks.
  • Hello, I would just like to say that I join the users who need to enter special issues into zotero database. I agree with everything nicolerochette says. So I really wish that the possibility of including this small functionality in zotero would not be forgotten.
  • Yes, this comes up (rarely) for me too. It's useful to be able to cite special issues, and it doesn't feel quite right to pretend it's a book or an article.

    However, as a workaround, and since this comes up so rarely, pretending it's an article actually seems to be close to the right formatting, just omitting page numbers and including the names as editors rather than authors. The only obvious problem is for styles that want some special term like "special issue" in the citation.

    Since it comes up so rarely for me, it's not a major priority for me personally, but I wanted to add in my voice that this seems "wrong" based on any current options, as a technicality, and may require manual revision if we need to cite these in a work, depending on the style.
  • “Periodical” as an item type is likely to be added in Zotero 5.1, but for now entering as journal article is the best path. Entering “Medium: Special issue” in Extra will add the label to the reference for several styles (e.g., APA).
  • Would just like to add an additional voice in favor of this category. I am working on a project that looks at image material from a journal that only ran a handful of issues, so the "journal article" category is not particularly helpful or relevant, as title/author/etc are categories that do not really apply to the images, not to mention that the number of images that need to be cited make entering each as a separate "article" impractical.

    This is a now a request with an 8 (8!) year history—there is clearly a reasonable and consistent demand for this feature. I would really hope that Zotero could accommodate this need in the immediate future.
  • See the posts above -- some version of this is likely to happen, it's going to be soon but not immediate, and there's a reason this is taking time. There are lots of feature requests in Zotero that have existed essentially since Zotero started (it's a lot easier to request something than to write the code), so an 8 year history isn't particularly noteworthy.
  • I support @mdfurney 's original feature request. Yes, a whole Journal is similar to a Book, and that's what I use now too. However ...

    When hierarchical items come (and pigs fly), I would like the hierarchy:
    --> Journal (name, publisher etc.)
    --> Volume (i.e. usually a year's worth; that which is bound as a book in a library).
    --> Issue (the physical journal that one receives in the post or buys at the 20C newsagent. This is associated with the date [which, BTW can sometimes have multiple months or a season, like "spring"]
    --> Journal Article

    This would match the hierarchy usually found on a journal's web-site or in a library index. The same would apply to magazines.
    Newspapers are a bit different as Volume does not apply and an Issue is generally identified (in archives etc.) just by the date.

    In the present Zotero, Journal is like a book series, Volume and Issue are both like Books and Journal article is like a Book Section. Note that some Journals vary their name from year to year.
  • For more discussion on hierarchical relationships, see also

    (Started October 23, 2006)
    “Books and Book Sections: Avoiding Input of Duplicate Info”
    https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/78/

    (Started February 5, 2007)
    “Hierarchical Item Relationships”
    https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/391/2/hierarchical-item-relationships/

    (Started July 6, 2015)
    “Sub-items”
    https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/comment/228300

    (Started August 24, 2015)
    “Hierarchical item types”
    https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/51349/hierarchical-item-types/

    (Started December 1, 2020 by me)
    “Feature Request: Link Book Sections to Book”
    https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/86468/feature-request-link-book-sections-to-book/


  • @bwiernik

    From what I understand, this is still an unresolved issue... and I need it too.

    You mentioned that "periodical" would probably be in Zotero 5.1
    Do you have any idea WHEN that new version of Zotero is due to be released?
    Any plans in the near future?

    In the meantime, I am trying to use the "book" item.

    The problem is that, when I enter "2020-06" in the date field, for example, and cite in MLA, it does not indicate the month.

    Is there a workaround for this?
  • Maybe an easier approach is to be able to enter all items of a book or journal at the same time? That way, you can grab a citation at the book/journal or chapter/article level? Zotero could then create a book/journal entry and a set of chapter/article entries at the same time. Ideally, of course, the book/journal entry keeps its relations to the chapter/article entries so if anything changes, it can replicate to the chapter/article entries?

    If we are only entering one article from a journal, then we can use the article type or the in book approach?

    I came here because I have a PDF of the whole journal issue and I was hoping to have a simpler way than to create each article entirely.
  • Just chipping in to say this would be a welcome addition as and when it comes. Tried the workaround suggested in an earlier thread of creating a book-type entry and child items through Zutilo, but many elements were still missing. Ended up changing the item type of the "book sections" to journal articles and then plugging in the missing details. Is there an easier way of doing this?
  • I'll comment on this to say that the ability to record some data on specific journals would be helpful. My use-case would include noting if publication implies peer-review, conflicts of interest, etc.
  • I am very perflexed at not being able to add a periodical and its contents to Zotero, apparently an old issue, going back to the 2000-aughts. This function appears to have been planned for the 5.0 version. I am running 6.0.8 (May 17, 2022) & this functionality is nowhere in sight. It would be most helpful to the periodical/serial title, its publication information and then the articles within as sub-records or sub-fields. These fields for each article would require tagging &c.

    In addition to managing citations, I am attempting to catalog my library, both physical books, journals & pamphlets as well as e-copies. You can to a point where you cannot find whether you have something or where it is.

    Many thanks for your consideration.
  • 5.1 = 6 (the versions were just renamed). New item types are being gradually added. Note though, that you won't get the ability to group articles with journals in any meaningful way (beyond the "related" function) in the foreseeable future
  • I also just wanted to bump this thread and echo the comments of others who have long been advocating for the necessity of this function.

    As print media history and periodical studies continue to become larger and exert their influence across the humanities and social sciences more generally, there is only going to be more of a need for an ability to cite entire issues. The current workarounds are insufficient and too time consuming—especially when it comes to those of us for whom periodicals are not just secondary but primary to our research and need to cite a vast amount of periodicals in full.

    Thank you for your continued work on this.
  • @bwiernik

    Any news about plans of adding periodical item type?
  • A periodical type is part of CSL 1.0.2, so you can designate an item as a periodical by putting this in Extra:

    Type: periodical

    That will be cited as a periodical for styles that support it. A dedicated periodical type will likely be added to Zotero at some point in the future.
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