Translator Error with American Chemistry Society websites

cjw5710
Report ID: 630247252

Whenever I have tried to save a paper from an American Chemical Society (ACS) journal, I get this error message: "An error occurred while saving this item. Check Known Translator Issues for more information."

The translator shown in () when I hover over my Zotero Chrome plug-in button is (ACS Publications). I only seem to be having issues with this translator.

Here is a link to an example paper that I couldn't download: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jo015533k

I tried updating my Translators in the "Options" --> "Advanced" tab, but that didn't seem to help. Should I reset my translators? Is there any other troubleshooting I could do?
  • adamsmith
    I can replicate this, no further need for troubleshooting on your end. I'll try to get to it asap, but it's a hectic time for me, so might be a couple of days.
  • adamsmith
    I've had some time to look at this, but it's not going to be easy. ACS very purposefully makes it hard to get to the "Download Citation" page*.

    What you can do as a workaround while we figure this out is to click on "Download Citation" on the right once per session. If you've done this once, ACS entries will import fine for the rest of your session.

    *For those interested in the technical part: when you request the Download Citation page, instead of serving it right away, ACS first gives you an empty page with nothing but a form that auto-triggers a POST request (with a bunch of random values from that page), which then in turn gives you the actual Download citation page.
  • kjhuston
    Thank you adamsmith for the workaround. Hope a full fix is available soon!
  • russellhanson
    I can confirm that the ACS translator is broken and that the workaround to click on "Download Citation" works. This has come up for me a couple of times and usually I go to PubMed and grab the citation there.
  • luuk
    In Firefox I am able to save a citation by clicking the pull down menu of Zotero (in the menu bar, the upside down triangle) and choose 'Save to Zotero using DOI'.
    The PDF still needs to be downloaded and added manually, but this route may be more convenient than clicking 'download citation'
  • adamsmith
    (the nice thing with the "Download Citation" option is that it'll work for the duration of an entire session, so might be useful if you're going to download multiple items (and get PDFs and abstract).
    I hope to get to a fix in the next week. I have a couple of ideas.
  • kplunkett
    Thanks for looking into a possible fix for this as well as providing the work-around "download citation". Hopefully the issue can be solved. I appreciate you looking into this issue!
  • pugal
    I cant able to add some pages in Zotero
  • mahbub03
    Previously it used to work fine, but today I just noticed I couldn't download anything from ACS to Zotero. A fix is really needed since ACS is the primary source of journal articles for chemistry/chemical major.
    We do expect a good feedback from the Zotero customer service. Thanks.
  • hintze
    @mahbub03 I dont think that being impolite makes the devs work faster. I hope you pay for this service. For me, its free, and I am more than happy to see that this issue is known and that its worked on.
  • adamsmith
    @hintze -- thanks; I actually took this as just a language issue, not intended as rude.

    Be that as it may, I'm happy to say that we believe we have a fix in place.
    Your version of Zotero will automatically update within 24hs, or you can update manually using the "Update Now" button in the "General" tab of the Zotero preferences. If you're using Standalone, restart Zotero and your browser after updating.

    We're only about 95% sure that the fix works reliably, so do let us know if you continue to experience problems, please.
  • mahbub03
    @Hintze and Adam: I didn't intend to be rude surely. I appreciate that the developers are working on to fix this issue.
  • hintze
    @adamsmith: yeah, rereading it you might be correct. if so, I would like to apologize ;)

    as far as the translator issue is concerned, for me it is working perfectly, at least on j phys chem. thanks a lot!
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