clickable DOI links in Bibliography/citations

mmoole
Hello,

how about to make the references to DOIs clickable in word/openoffice documents? Often, we also generate a PDF from the documents, and it would be easier for the reader (professor, etc... mostly a bit less used to technology as we zotero users) to simply click on the DOI instead of copy/paste or typing in order to look up a reference.
This would apply to everywhere a DOI is displayed in a document.
It would be even more consistent i would think because URLs are already being recognized in some cases automatically (but not in Neooffice as i am trying right now...).

I hope this would be possible in Word as well as in Openoffice...?

greetings
mmoole
  • adamsmith
    this isn't trivial - the doi by itself isn't a link that works in a browser - you need the dx.doi.org/ in front of it, so that would have to be added somehow - which means Zotero would have to write this as an embedded link, which it doesn't ever do - the URLs that you can click atm are just auto-converted to links by the word processor.
  • mmoole
    Hello,

    ok, then this would mean to add that kind of embedded markup enclosing the doi links (and maybe normal http links, too) to the word plugins, i think...? I cant imagine how (un)possible that would be... :-)

    Well, there is another point i wonder about: if then we would have real clickable links there in the text document, they are normally underlined. This can also be seen as a citation style concern.... maybe underlined links are allowed in some, some dont care, and some disallow it?
    But on the other hand, the user should have something to recognize that there is a link and that he/she can click on it. This is normally done by underlining and often setting the color to blue.
    Do we have a contradiction here? Maybe it can be realized by formatting the text without underline?

    greetings
    mmoole
  • adamsmith
    the hyperlinks you are seeing are not by Zotero, they are auto-inserterted by the word processor, a feature that can be turned off - as is the look of these hyperlinks - so this really is nothing Zotero has to get into.
  • mmoole
    but as far as i understood, adding clickable DOIs would mean to add this capability to the zotero plugin. When doing this, it could maybe be possible to add also support for fine tuning links - maybe underlining is not wanted, or it should be emphasized?
    Just an idea....

    greetings
    mmoole
  • adamsmith
    display of hyperlinks would most likely still be determined by the word processor - by default it is and I don't see a strong reason to change this. I also don't think adding embedded links is going to happen any time soon.
  • schibones
    edited December 6, 2015
    I agree that the problem described above most likely has to be solved via the word processor, but does someone have a suggestion on how to do that?

    I need to generate bibliographies of Zotero collections that contain clickable DOI links or URL links. Not necessarily directly as I cite them in a word processor, but rather when I create/export the reference list directly from Zotero. Is there a way to do so?

    If not... the DOI citation format of a lot of citation styles (e.g. APA) does show the DOI as a complete URL (with http:// etc) , however, if you insert the Zotero-created list from your clipboard into Word, the hyperlink isn't added. As mentioned by adamsmith above, turning Hyperlinks OFF is easy, but I haven't found a way to turn them ON for all URLs in a text retrospectively.
    If you manually insert "enter" or press the spacebar behind any URL in the text, it is instantly converted to a clickable link (Apparently Word is using Auto-Correct to do this), but I find no way to do so automatically for all URLs in a Zotero-generated bibliography. (find/replace and then redo hasn't worked for me either.)

    Again, I realize that this problem is only indirectly a problem of Zotero (unless I am missing a way to create the bibliography with clickable DOI links), however, numerous Google searches and hours of trying to solve it in my Word processor have so far been unsuccessful and I would greatly appreciate any suggestions, work-arounds or other word processors/programs that could solve this. Thanks so much in advance!
  • adamsmith
    I'm pretty sure you can select the bibliography and auto-reformat it. With Word set to turn URLs into hypelinks, that should do it.
  • schibones
    You managed to make me feel extremely stupid..but thank you very much. Works perfectly!
  • Emmadukew
    It's also helped me (almost!) - I've been able to update them to clickable links in Word for Mac (2015) by highlighting each URL & selecting add hyperlink - which wasn't too cumbersome, though could be ifI had more references. [Though, to be fair, still much easier than typing them in one by one!]. I'd already tried just adding a space at the end - which didn't work -though it did elsewhere in the doc, so autoformat at you type is clearly working; guessing it's the field codes that are stopping it working (?).

    I've searched a few places, but can't seem to find how to auto-reformat in Office for Mac. - is it one of those things that's in the Windows version, but not the Mac version. [Haven't got access to the latest version of Word for Windows to try to find it there to see if I can then locate it in the Mac - have to say, it's something I've never tried to do before!)
  • adamsmith
    I think (!) this should work on mac, too: http://www.addintools.com/documents/word/where-autoformat.html#WithoutClassicMenuB

    Note that for me this only works to link URLs after I remove field codes via the Zotero add-on (which, of course, you should only ever do in a copy of the document, since it breaks all links to Zotero).
  • Emmadukew
    That did work - though I was only able to find out where to do it on the Windows version - from what I've read you can't do it on the Mac. However, at least I now know that I can do it on the PC, if needed.

    Once again, thanks for the help.
  • schibones
    I'm on a Mac running Office for Mac 2011 and (after adamsmith pointed it out to me...thanks again) it works perfectly reformatting the entire document at once. Format...Autoformat...boom..all there; if in the autoformat options the "replace urls with Hyperlinks" box is checked.
  • Emmadukew
    edited March 17, 2016
    Either I'm being exceptionally dense, or Word for Mac 2016 doesn't have that option ... it's certainly got the autoformat as you type sorted, as typed in URLs become clickable, but I can't see an autoformat under the format options, and, a search through help finds "autocorrect", "AutoText" & assorted others, but not autoformat. :(
    [That said, at least the suggestion of unlinking, then tapping the space bar after each reference isn't too bad & forces you to check that they're all presented exactly as required]

    Just done a bit of searching - it's a hidden tool that you have to activate & then remember the shortcut! (http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/mac/forum/macoffice2016-macword/apply-autoformat-options/c86828d1-acd8-4303-aceb-dc9f84345104?auth=1 )
  • Grode
    " I'm pretty sure you can select the bibliography and auto-reformat it. With Word set to turn URLs into hypelinks, that should do it. "

    Hmm, never by me. Neither in Word 2013 nor 2016 (on PC). Links in the reference list will stay as text never to be turned into links. Adobe Acrobat will turn them into links so it is a minor problem. Only the looks that is not linkyfied.
  • adamsmith
    see above -- several successful attempts across systems, so this should work in general.
  • Grode
    Yep, I noticed. But it still doesn't work in my case. I already knew that when I type a link pressing <space> will change it into a link and then I checked to see if selecting a reference list with links would change them into links. It does not.

    I have a little testfile you can look at. There is another issue in that... a reference in the text is (J. Grode, 2015; Steen Grode, 2014, 2015, 2015) and I have no idea why my name is in full.
  • adamsmith
    just to be clear -- selecting the ref list isn't enough. You need to run autoformat over the list after selecting. The names/initials is
    https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/given_name_disambiguation
  • Grode
    Exactly what I am doing. Still it makes no difference. But as I mentioned Adobe fix this. I actually only began looking into this because I would like a mouse over effect on the references in the text showing the full reference. That seem to be much more difficult to achieve.

    And for the name thing. J. Grode I understand, but why Steen Grode isn't S. Grode I have no idea about.
  • adamsmith
    If you have S. Grode and Steen Grode (or Sabine Grode and Steen Grode), Zotero would expand Steen to disambiguate the two.
  • Grode
    Nope, sorry. I only have Jesper Grode and Steen Grode. None other indications of "Grode" in my Zotero (at least not when I search it).
  • adamsmith
    How does that reference look in the bibliography?
  • LiborA
    @Grode: do you have Steen Grode in your library as the person (in two fields) or as the corporate author (in one field)? I have the same problem, but that was my mistake when I changed authors from 2 fields item to 1 field item (corporate author)
  • Grode
    Both Grode, Jesper and Grode, Steen are two fields in any entry. I have the latter in several references ;-)
  • adamsmith
    Can you replicate this in a new document?
  • Grode
    Back then I could, but now about a month later it does not happen. So either magic has worked or somebody fixed something in Zotero.
  • alapo
    Not sure if this helps but there is a way to accomplish this although it may not be optimable. I write all my documents in RMarkdown, and when I export to Word (.docx) the citations are hyperlinked
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