Retrieve Metadata from PDF

I understand that the "Retrieve Metadata from PDF" send automated requests to Google Scholar. Is it possible to add another database or change the database for the requests?

  • There's no end user way to change the search heuristic.

    The feature already searches other sources if a numeric identifier (doi/isbb) is found.

    Which other sources are you thinking of?
  • It actually firsts looks for an ISBN and a DOI to query Worldcat and CrossRef respectively. Only then does it go to google scholar.
    That's not customizable without patching the software itself -- there are a couple of reasons for that, but most importantly Zotero needs the ability to search through the full text of articles and there are not many databases, not even disciplinary ones, that offer that for a large enough set of papers to make sense.

    If you do want to patch, the good news is that the relevant code is all in a single file
    https://github.com/zotero/zotero/blob/master/chrome/content/zotero/recognizePDF.js
  • thanks for the explanation. Actually I found the PDF I'm looking for with the ISBN in worldcat. But Zotero 5.0 can't find the Metadata of the PDF, although it has worked with Zotero 4.

    I tested this PDF with Firefox 54.0.1 and Chrome 59.0.3071.115:

    http://literatur.thuenen.de/digbib_extern/dn056163.pdf
  • edited July 17, 2017
    But Zotero 5.0 can't find the Metadata of the PDF, although it has worked with Zotero 4.
    Thanks — I can confirm this. It looks like 4.0 tries Gemeinsamer Bibliotheksverbund ISBN after LoC fails, but 5.0 doesn't and instead skips ahead to Google Scholar. Issue created — we'll investigate.
  • OK, this should be fixed in 5.0.5-beta.3.
This discussion has been closed.