Duplicate citations
Hi,
I've just merged two documents, both with citations created via Zotero 5. Nevertheless, on refreshing the bibliography some papers are cited twice e.g. number 1 and number 5. The paper is the same, the citation the same, there is no duplicate in my Zotero library, yet Zotero has allocated two different citation numbers? Why has this happened?
I've just merged two documents, both with citations created via Zotero 5. Nevertheless, on refreshing the bibliography some papers are cited twice e.g. number 1 and number 5. The paper is the same, the citation the same, there is no duplicate in my Zotero library, yet Zotero has allocated two different citation numbers? Why has this happened?
See Customizing Cites here:
https://www.zotero.org/support/word_processor_plugin_usage
There is not currently a function to identify orphaned citations.
@rmzelle Does Reference Extractor do this at all?
(@bwiernik, that's also not my handle here :) )
I agree it would be nice to identify the unlinked citations, even nicer to help semi-automatically re-link them. By "semi-automatically" I mean that Zotero could relatively easily be programmed to show old and new author, date, title, etc., then ask me to accept the match. This would be a lot like the merging of duplicate records in the library.
Given the large quantity of citations that are unlinked, it would be convenient if I could relink them en-masse, with a GUI similar to the Duplicate Items pane in Zotero Standalone.
Sometimes after deleting an unlinked citation, when I start replacing it, I am given a list of possible references based on the words I type into the Add/Edit Citation bar. I sometimes see two possible choices in the Cited section--one with the author's name, and the other without the author's name. The trick is that to insert the first linked citation, I need to select neither of those, and instead go down to the My Library section and select that one. For ensuing citations, I need to select the choice from Cited that includes the author's name. It took a little trial-and-error but I think I have figured out the workaround steps for now.
Yes, @adamsmith, a proper solution would be very convenient for me.
Thanks so much! :)
We really need to a solution that does the following:
1. identify unlinked citations
2. automatically re-link them to the knew library.
3. identifying citations that are linked but have been overwritten manually in word. THe underlying citation has something different stored than what is written in word.
I'm currently editing a paper (another person's) which has over 300 citations....figuring out which is linked and isn't is a nightmare
This happens to me when I get a draft back from a collaborator, and many (but not all) references become orphan, although they are still in my library (unaltered in any way); it's just that the link is broken.
This issue is especially annoying, as some instances of the same ref are orphaned, while any new references I make are not. This leads the citation engine to use a and b to disambiguate. So (Shahar, 2015) becomes (Shahar, 2015a) for the orphan ref, and (Shahar, 2015b) for the new/linked reference.
If you're working on the same document together and citing from your own personal libraries instead of a shared group library, you'd want to be sure to choose from the Cited section of the search results in the citation dialog for any existing citations rather than choosing from your library.
You can toggle Word field codes and look at the URLs in the code to see what's going on under the hood. If my guess is right, you'll see URLs from two different users/groups for citations that are being disambiguated.
An option to help relink citations would be, I think, of enormous value. I'm thinking of something along these lines:
1. A button that highlights all unlinked citations in the current document
2. An option to attempt to relink them, using metadata in those references to query the local library (or a group to be specified)
I understand that the UI/UX here is not at all trivial, so don't want to minimize the effort, but as I say above -- it'd save a ton of time all around.
I checked an old document I wrote in 2015. It holds 50 citations in its bibliography. With Reference Extractor I found that 48 of those are in my library. However, Reference Extractor does not show which are the two that are not and need to be updated. So, if I copy citations to a new document, I have to check every single one of them to find the 1% that is orphaned and probably has a better reference in the library.
The only thing I would like to have is to know which references in the bibliography are also in the library, and which are not.
If you use the "Add/edit bibliography" button in Word you get a table of all references. Wouldn't it be easy if you could highlight all of them that are part of the library?
Providing better ways to identify orphaned citations in a document is planned, but that doesn't change the fact that you shouldn't delete duplicate items you've cited — you should always merge them. You don't have to do that, but you should recognize that you're then not using Zotero as intended and some things will work worse than they need to. There's no way that ending up with an orphaned citation in a document that needed to be fixed later — no matter how that was made possible — would be easier than avoiding the problem to begin with.
When I go to "duplicate items" tab on the left, it goes through and selects the duplicate items. But if one of those items is a webpage and the other is a journal article, It gives a message that I can't merge citations of different types. Because both are highlighted by the forced default, I can't select the webpage duplicate independently, in order to drag it into the journal article citation. In order to do this, I have to go to their collection or do a full library search to locate them again and THEN merge the two of them by dragging the webpage citation into the journal article citation.
Minor inconvenience but would love to figure out a way around it.