Zotero inserts city into bibliography even though there is no field for it.

Hello,

I can't seem to find a thread discussing this so I've started a new one.
I have an issue where the city is inserted into the bibliography even though there is no field for it in Zotero. This seems to be automatically retrieved from some database because if I manually edit the Publication field, the city disappears. How do I disable this annoying "feature"?

Here is an album with a couple of screenshots: https://imgur.com/a/kwNmh
Image 1: the fields that are populated in Zotero
Image 2: what gets inserted in the bibliography. Note the "Transfusion (Paris)".

Are there any secret fields that are not shown by default in Zotero?
I am using Item Type: Journal Article, and the citation style is Nature Genetics.

Thanks!
  • edited February 4, 2018
    No, there is no secret fields.
    I am not sure but I think there exist a few journals with the same title, and Zotero add automatically suffix in this cases.

    See this https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/65491/biochemistry-incorrectly-referred-to-as-biochemistry-mosc
  • Yes, what you are seeing are some idiosyncrasies in the list Zotero used to abbreviate journal titles. @adamsmith Was a satisfactory solution to this issue ever figured out?
  • Essentially no, there's no satisfactory solution. I think the three options are
    1. To disable automated abbreviations and rely on the journal Abbr. field in Zotero (which can be edited)
    2. To override automated abbreviations with the abbreviations filter add-on or
    3. just delete this manually before sending off the article.

    I think it'd be nice to put some more work into abbreviations in Zotero so that we can also, e.g. set up different filters for things like SBL or OSCOLA style, but I don't think anyone will be working on that anytime soon.
  • @LoborA is correct. When there are 2 or more journals with the same name (such as when a journal ends publication and another publisher uses the same name to start a new publication with that name), The world-wide indexing standards require that the city where the new journal is published be appended to the title. At least one of the standards recommends that, prospectively, the first-published journal also have the publication city appended.

    Sometimes you will see a journal's name or abbreviation followed by a year within curved brackets. This applies when the same named journals are published from the same place. There are other situations when this is done but that is the chief cause. The year of the first issue is the standard disambiguation key in this case.

    This appended matter has little to do with the publisher's intent. These "official" naming standards are used by libraries to distinguish one publication from another. (My comments are true but are a simplification of the way that naming rules are applied -- such as when ISSNs are assigned, etc.)

    I'm not certain how Zotero automatically assigns abbreviations "behind the scenes" but the most likely way is to get the name or abbreviation from the ISSN registry. Relying on a journal publisher's metadata is not dependable. It is common for publishers to ignore the expanded abbreviation for the simple proprietary name. Databases (such as PubMed, PsycInfo, etc.) use the ISO standard name instead of simply following the simple publisher-given name in order to disambiguate one journal from another.

    Things became even more complicated in recent years with predatory publishers selecting journal names that, (while different from existing journals, when abbreviated using using the standard LTWA vocabulary) will be listed with an abbreviation identical to a more reputable journal. These publishers even go so far as registering companies in cities (such as New York, Philadelphia, etc.) where the more reputable publishers have their headquarters. [It is possible to register a company for as little as US$100.]
  • Zotero uses an NLM-provided abbreviation lists for journal titles combined with a word list and an algorithm for words it doesn't know to abbreviate journal titles automatically according to ISO standards. That's correct about 99% of the time, but, as can be seen here, not always.
  • edited February 5, 2018
    If Zotero's abbreviation includes a city or date in parens, it is _probably_ correct. However, to be absolutely certain, you may want to confirm that the article is from the correct journal. These abbreviations are rare and the few minutes needed to confirm correctness (by going to the publisher site and checking the volume, issue, AND the pagination) could be time well spent.

    When I grade student papers and when I review manuscript submissions, I closely check the reference list. I do a quick reading of the paper and then a thorough review of the reference list. A sloppy reference list is usually an accurate reflection of the quality of the care given to the research behind the report. A reference list with errors indicates that my second reading of the body of the report must be especially thorough. I demand that a student's submission have an accurate reference list before I'm willing to accept the paper for grading. I'm not particularly demanding about a particular reference style but I insist that the list be accurate and that the actual references support the statements that were cited.

    EDIT- When I review a manuscript and it has incorrect references I call for a major revision. There is no good reason for not providing a perfect reference list.
  • I don’t think that confidence is well placed regarding the cities. For example, Zotero abbreviates Biochemistry as Biochem (Moscow), which is almost certainly not correct for non-Russian authors.
  • Is it not possible to do an ISSN lookup to capture the abbreviations?
  • Thank you so much for all the replies. I'm certain that Zotero has made a mistake here as the journal I'm referencing is published by AABB, a US organization. I understand that there doesn't seem to be a good way for Zotero to select the right city at the moment, even if it _usually_ gets it right. I'm definitely not averse to checking my references, but I would like to disable this function so that I can manually edit it.

    Currently, I've removed field codes so that I can change it. This is obviously not an optimal workflow. Is there another better way to do this?
  • As per my above, you can turn off automated journal abbreviations in the "Set Document Preferences" dialog. Zotero will then draw from the journalAbbr. field which you can fix permanently where it's missing or incorrect.
  • edited February 8, 2018
    You can also create an abbreviations.json file and store it in your Zotero data directory with a modified abbreviations list:
    https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/comment/275220/#Comment_275220
    https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/29501/local-list-of-journal-abbreviations/

    Or use the Abbreviations Filter plugin to manage your abbreviations:
    https://juris-m.github.io/downloads/

    @adamsmith Considering that there are a number of known unlikely-cities in the default list, I wonder if a reasonable first-step in improving would be to add a script to make these few modifications when the MEDLINE list is imported during the Zotero build (cf. https://github.com/zotero/zotero/pull/826).
Sign In or Register to comment.