How To Edit Citation Within Zotero Firefox eg. Adding URL & Citation Discrepancies

elizabethmoran84
Hello,

I'm pretty new to Zotero but love the capabilities. I'm having trouble with a couple things.

I'm using Zotero directly in Firefox and writing in Microsoft Word for Mac, running Yosemite.

1) I can't find out how preview what a citation will look like and be able to edit that from within Firefox. The only option seems to be to be able to edit it within Word once I've entered the Endnote.

-The reason I'm wanting to do this is that many of the citations are not including the URL even though I have selected in the Zotero preferences to do so. So then I have to add it into the citation directly, BUT the edit window says that will make syncing no longer functional, which I don't totally understand.

2) Some citations aren't complete, despite all the information being in the Zotero. This happens even for ones pulled from journal sites that have ideal citation saving abilities.

3) Some pages/PDF especially save a a file and not exactly a citable file, so I create a new one and put the PDF into that. Not sure if that's the correct thing to do.

Any insight would be greatly appreciated!
  • noksagt
    Zotero has several citations styles. Which are you using? You may need to modify that style to display the URL to address #1 and it may be similarly deficient in some way for #2.

    Re #3: for journal articles, click the translate button on the webpage for the article, rather than the pdf. If you have a Zotero webpage item already, you can customize the details to match the reference.

    If you have a PDF that does not have a parent item, refer to:
    https://www.zotero.org/support/retrieve_pdf_metadata
  • elizabethmoran84
    Thank you so much for your response.

    I'm using Chicago 16th at the moment. The odd thing is it's including the URL for some of the citations that are in the same category, but not others.

    It's also not properly citing movies, etc when I do the "video recording" setting.

    I'll try that with the PDF's thank you! They are already in Zotero because it's how it saves them.

    And is there a way to preview the citations before I add them in a footnote? Or to edit them outside of using the Word edit? Because that seems to affect syncing, but I don't see a way to edit their presentation in Zotero so as to preserve the syncing.

    Re#3 I'm not sure what you mean by translate. The PDFs I have are generally straight up PDF's that aren't from a journal page, though some are. They are only the PDF report. To I save to Zotero then do "new document" or "new Report" and put the PDF in there.
  • adamsmith
    1) For the most part, if an item has a URL and doesn't show it, you're looking at a journal article with a page range. Zotero assumes that's a print article and you'd normally don't want a URL. If you do, you can toggle that behavior in the Zoteor preferences under Cite--> Styles (the include URL box).

    2. Previewing: you can use quick copy https://www.zotero.org/support/creating_bibliographies#quick_copy or one of the preview panes,
    https://www.zotero.org/support/dev/citation_styles/reference_test_pane
    https://www.zotero.org/support/dev/citation_styles/preview_pane
    though I wouldn't consider either terribly convenient. But by adjusting data in Zotero, even inserted citations will still update, so that's always an option.

    (Movies aren't easy to cite -- for one, Zotero doesn't properly recognize directors as such, but then the Chicago manual is also very vague about how that should happen, offering a lot of alternatives about the relative position of elements).

    noksagt's 3. refers to https://www.zotero.org/support/getting_stuff_into_your_library#web_translators , not sure to what degree that applies in your situation, but he's right that you should aim to use that whenever possible.
  • elizabethmoran84
    Thank you adamsmith

    1) I do have the URL box clicked and have throughout this issue.

    2) wow that CSL is really confusing. I wouldn't know what to change! I wish it would just show how it's going to be and allow me to edit that in a normal fashion.

    Only shows that in Word editor but then syncing is ruined. Is there a way to suggest such a thing?
  • noksagt
    CSL is designed such that the generated bibliography matches the style. Many of these call for a URL to not be included for some references. With most of the Chicago styles in zotero, a URL will not be given when a DOI is given, for instance. This matches the style guidelines and if you wanted to modify it, it'd no longer be the Chicago style.

    But I'm under the impression that you are not confined to a single style, so you may wish to try a different style.

    If you think that what you are trying to output is correct under the guide for the style you have chosen, we need explicit examples of the full data for the reference you're trying to generate, what is being generated, and what you think should be generated.
  • elizabethmoran84
    Thank you noksagt. The reason I want the URL there is because this article will be on my website and to make hyperlinking the sources easier, since that isn't an inbuilt function in Zotero, having the URL in the citation would mean I could cut it and paste it into the link for the work.

    Does that make sense?

    I was just hoping there would be an "edit view" that is like the one in the word "edit citation" window. So that I can add the URL and such without breaking a link.

    Some do this, like this endnote:

    Naylor et al., “Effect of Aquaculture on World Fish Supplies.”Nature 405, no. 6790 (June 29, 2000): 1017–24. doi:10.1038/35016500. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v405/n6790/full/4051017a0.html

    But others do not like this endnote:

    Rosamond L. Naylor et al., “Nature’s Subsidies to Shrimp and Salmon Farming,” Science 282, no. 5390 (October 30, 1998): 883–84, doi:10.1126/science.282.5390.883

    Both are the same format and have the same information in Firefox Zotero.
  • adamsmith
    edited March 5, 2016
    No, not without editing CSL in one way or the other, sorry.
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