ScienceDirect translator error report 2/4/2009

elendil
First of all, thanks a lot to all the developers of Zotero.

I'd like to report a problem with ScienceDirect translator.
I believe this problem started fairly recently (within a couple of weeks).

My problem is that when I click 'save to Zotero' when I'm browsing
a full article page (containing title, abstract, all the main texts and figures),
Zotero translator incorrectly downloads author list and abstract.
Also, Zotero does not download an associated PDF file anymore.

Here're more detailed descriptions of the corrupted info,

1. Author list is corrupted in the middle authors section and displays
such things as '(first)' as a last name for some names, and some first
names are truncated.

2. Downloaded abstract info actually not only contains 'abstract' but
also contains all things below the author list, including author affiliations,
abstract, introduction, .... , all the way down to acknowledgments.

Until about a month ago, there was no problem extracting citation info,
and downloading associated pdf files automatically while using ScienceDirect.

I have the same full-access institutional subscription as I used have a month ago,
and I didn't change my location, ip or anything.

Here's my example url which does not work correctly from my location:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WSN-4VB624Y-G&_user=145269&_coverDate=01%2F09%2F2009&_rdoc=14&_fmt=high&_orig=browse&_srch=doc-info(%23toc%237051%232009%23998639998%23819049%23FLA%23display%23Volume)&_cdi=7051&_sort=d&_docanchor=&_ct=23&_acct=C000012078&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=145269&md5=f92cf1d6deaaa3c52b3173bf92e56bf6

Above url gives me a full access to the article at my location,
but as it's evident when looking at '_userid' and '_acct' options in the url,
this url is tailored to my institution's subscription status.
(Again, which gives me a full access to the article.)

For the ease of clicking, I grabbed a shorter url for the same article, here.
It was extracted from a redirection page from Cell website to ScienceDirect:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=GatewayURL&_origin=CELLPRESS&_urlversion=4&_method=citationSearch&_version=1&_piikey=S0092867408014906&md5=53bc7cef5dec8d6aee264407288532b5

This url will be transformed into a new url when you actually get into the
article webpage, and will reflect your institutional subscription status.

My errors occur when I'm browsing this full article page with all the privileges.

If I use the same url above from a different ip where my institutional subscription
does not cover, I get only a "preview" page for the article (title, authors and abstract only).
In that case, I get correct author list and abstract when download to Zotero,
but I get a false 'downloaded pdf' attachment as well, which actually is not a pdf file,
but a link to ScienceDirect subscriber login webpage.

I hope my report could be helpful in tracking down this issue.

Thanks a lot for reading this long report,
and thanks in advance regarding your help and support!!
  • valiantdust
    I'm having trouble with SD also (and ditto on the cheers to the developers for a very useful product!).

    In my case Zotero sees the page as a ScienceDirect page, but I get the "An error occurred while saving this item. Check Known Translator Issues for more information." error message.

    It's got to be a new problem, since I pulled a few references down from ScienceDirect a few weeks ago with no trouble. Since then, though, I've updated from 1.5 SP 3.6 to SP 3.7 and then 3.8, so maybe the updates broke the translator...

    Here's a page that didn't work for me:

    http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VF1-4HR75NF-1&_user=945391&_coverDate=03%2F31%2F2007&_rdoc=7&_fmt=high&_orig=browse&_srch=doc-info(%23toc%235997%232007%23999809997%23644726%23FLA%23display%23Volume)&_cdi=5997&_sort=d&_docanchor=&_ct=12&_acct=C000048959&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=945391&md5=78d220ead57a149f0bd2538545388c32
  • dstillman
    valiantdust: Yours is a different issue from the post above, but you're getting a "permission denied" error, which generally indicates a conflict with another extension or application. See Step 5 on the Troubleshooting Translator Issues page, and start a new thread if you're still having trouble.
  • hh
    So it seems I am having a similar problem, science direct lately (since the new beta? was using sync preview before) will not grab the pdf for most of the sites I go to. I have institutional access, so right now I am just saving the pdfs elsewhere and then importing them.

    One of the sources where I am having this issue:
    http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VDY-3TMXY03-7&_user=961305&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000049425&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=961305&md5=5bd41415206f54db358fe9aa19a9c759

    Actually, I just checked, it does not seem like I can get pdfs grabbed from any science direct journal.

    Hope that helps in some way.
    Thank you!
  • sean
    Let's start with the basics: do you have "Automatically attach associated PDFs and other files when saving items" checked on the General pane of Zotero preferences?
  • hh
    Ouch.... I just totally wasted your time and am truly sorry.
    I was doing some reinstalling on my system, and it had seemed to me that Firefox and zotero had kept all their preferences. Therefore I just made the assumption that nothing had changed there. So I played around with the translators, refreshed them, disabled other extensions, looked around the forum...and then asked stupid questions.
    Again, I apologize, will try to check for the simple solutions first myself in the future. Thank your very much, and by the way, zotero has made my research so much more efficient, it is hard to believe.
  • sean
    Glad it's working for you now.
This discussion has been closed.