Finding full text for items in Group Libraries

elundgren
Hello,

I am working on a public searchable bibliography (~550 items) to be shared with various other researchers and professionals. Zotero, with its public groups, is the best tool I've found, and so far I've been very pleased.

However, there are two issues I have not found a solution for:

1. To prevent copyright infringement, I can't have pdfs attached with items in the public group. However, I see no way to copy from My Library to the Group Library without the attachments following. Am I missing a way to copy from My Library to a Group Library and not copy the pdfs?

2. More importantly, the primary purpose of this public group is to help people find research they wouldn't otherwise find, therefore having an option to find the full text is imperative. Is there an option to search Google Scholar through Groups? The Locate button in the My Library is missing in the online portal, and I haven't been able to find any documentation online. Is this functionality available through the Zotero API? If not, would there be a way to automatically add a search link to the Notes field of each item?

Thank you so much for your time, and I hope this was clear.

Erick
  • adamsmith
    1) a) note that in a public closed group (everyone can view, only members can join) you can actually have attached files that visitors to the group's page on zotero.org can't access.
    b) In an open public group, Zotero wouldn't let you store attached files in the first place
    c) You can also disable file sharing for any other group in the group's settings.
    d) You can disable "child snapshots and imported files" from being moved along it
    ems when moving to groups in the general tab of the Zotero preferences.

    2) I'm not aware of any good option here. The problem with the locate button is that it'd have to be customizable to the group page's _visitor_, which isn't impossible but non-trivial.

    How about simply making sure the DOI and/or URL fields are populated? Those should typically lead to the full text.
  • elundgren
    1) - Thanks for that clarification. I started a private group as a test, so this makes sense.

    2) Well the DOI field will lead to the publisher paywall. The best option would be a URL to the Google Scholar search, which more often than not finds a pdf/full text.

    This information was helpful, thank you. Just to confirm, if you can, there isn't increased manual control in the web API to allow custom and automatically populated links?

  • adamsmith
    that's correct, yes.
  • elundgren
    Thanks Adam, I appreciate the help.
  • bwiernik
    If there is a known open access copy of the item (e.g., on the author's website or in a repository), you could also attach a URI link to the item that points to the open access copy. For example, see the "Full Text Link" attachments for my My Publications page: https://www.zotero.org/bwiernik
  • elundgren
    Thank you, yes, I think manually adding a URI link for each item is the only way to proceed. I do think that a Search by Google Scholar link, just like Web of Science has, would be a great addition to the Zotero groups toolbox. Thank you both for your time.

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