Preview for "retrieve pdf metadata" feature

igw · May 9, 2009

Using the retrieve pdf metadata feature often results in errors. Sometimes the google scholar data is incomplete or inaccurate. Sometimes a completely wrong article is detected.

I know the accuracy of this feature is bound to be much improved in future versions of zotero. Still, I think it would be good to have the option to preview the retrieved metadata. This way one would be be able to cancel instead of having to find and tediously undo erroneous retrievals afterwards.

(Sorry if this has been requested before).

adamsmith · May 9, 2009

very good idea - something like a dialogue displaying author and beginning of article name and then allowing the user to cancel - this could also be done for multiple articles at once - I'm thinking along the lines of the dialogue for grabbing multiple articles e.g. from JSTOR.

amacom73 · May 9, 2009

This has come up once or twice, and is an excellent idea. It could be in the form of "confirm metadata" checkboxes next to each PDF in a batch operation. I think it'd also be useful to be able to point the metadata searcher to a particular repository as well, since pubmed has better curated metadata for biomedical papers than google scholar, though it's clear that google scholar is the best way to provide the most useful service for the most Zotero users.

Regarding accuracy, I believe the next Z release will check PDFs for DOI and try to use that as the lookup, which ought to help.

see this thread:
http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/6376/search-google-scholar-for-pdfs

grubs · June 30, 2011

Raising from the dead! - thats what happens when users search for previously posts!

I'm using the retrieve metadata feature on a lot of PDFs at the moment and I have a lot that simply retrieve the wrong data...which is a PITA as there is no quick UNDO or confirmation before the incorrect data is slapped into the database with a big green tick.

A preview as the OP suggested in 2009, or a quick undo button would be great.

hmm.. seems the site search shows older posts first,...

A related conversation is at http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/7684/create-blank-entry-from-standalone-attachment/#Item_2