Export to bibtex loses the field # of Pages

projecturfu
Items of book type when exporting to bibtex do lose field # of Pages, so bibtex translator and .bst file can not make up a complete bibliographic record. Thank you.
  • adamsmith
    I don't think there is a field in standard bibtex for this, it's there?
  • projecturfu
    That's right, Adam.
    But I can explain why this is important. As you know, most scientific journals offer authors to draw bibliography using .bst file and .bib file. Russian standard requires that the book has the number of pages. .bst file for Russian standard, we create ourselves, and other universities will be able to use it. The only thing is that all the fields available in the Zotero went into export.
  • nickbart
    The BibLaTeX (and Better BibLaTeX) export filters export this to “pagetotal”, which is an official BibLaTeX field. Does that help?
  • adamsmith
    yes, you should probably use biblatex for a Russian standard anyway. Also give you default utf-8 support, for example.
  • projecturfu
    For publications within the university - it's good. For publications in journals - as you know, guide for authors usually offers a .bst file, sometimes, but not always - .csl file. I scanned instructions of more than 300 scientific journals, and never met biblatex.
  • adamsmith
    but those journals also don't want page counts for books. (And they're not in Cyrillic). I mean -- there simply is no number of pages field in bibtex we could export to. We could make something up, but that's really not a good idea.
  • projecturfu
    I understand your thoughts about "bad idea": one university will use in .bst file entry "subseries", another something else, and it violates the idea that .bst files are standard, generally applicable. But we have an excuse: an item "number of pages" is included in the Russian national standard. It should be added that the used today .bst file ugost2003.bst for Russian Standard has Entry pages and processes it for the type of book . The only thing we do not have is a complete export from Zotero.
  • adamsmith
    but what bibtex field are you even using for this?
  • noksagt
    edited September 30, 2015
    http://mirrors.ctan.org/biblio/bibtex/contrib/gost/ugost2003.bst
    numpages or pages

    The documentation (PDF) makes it clear that numpages is not standard BibTeX and claims that it borrowed it from BibLaTeX (though, given "pagetotal", I'm not sure if that is the origin). There are only a limited number of other styles that use the numpages field. It isn't in JabRef or other popular BibTeX programs. When there's little agreement on fields, we tend to not export them.

    If you export to BibLaTeX, search for "pagetotal" and replace with "numpages", that output should most likely work with your BibTeX BST file. Alternatively, there is a BibLaTeX/Biber style for GOST.
  • adamsmith
    noksagt -- I usually leave those calls to you. Happy to implement if you don't have objections. (And if so probably as numpages, since pages would seem like it'd be much more likely to conflict with other styles).
  • noksagt
    edited September 30, 2015
    If it were implemented, numpages seems to be slightly more popular; on my current machine, I have 1 style that refers to pagetotal and 12 that refer to numpages (out of 284 styles) [though that includes APS and IOP styles that use it to mean something else].

    But to be clear: based on how rare the usage is within BSTs and the absence from other BibTeX-based software, I'd prefer to NOT implement this. This isn't a strong preference, though; it shouldn't break anything & others may say I'm underestimating the utility.
  • projecturfu
    ... Just now two .bst files ugost2003.bst , ugost2008.bst implementing two different Russian standards have both entries "pages" and "numpages".
  • projecturfu
    Here is an excerpt from the .bst files:
    ENTRY
    {
    ...
    pages
    ....
    numpages
    ...
    }
    For type "book" they process both entries, but "numpages" is beeing processed for type "book" more correctly, as stated in the standard.

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