Removing fields in Zotero

jml512
Hello all,

I am working on updating a citation style for my company. I was wondering if there is a way to remove the journal abbreviation field? We have numerous people working on documents and we would like to keep the bibliography uniform. Some users end up entering a journal abbreviation or zotero just autopopulates it in. This creates an issue when we finish a huge document (200+ pages) with more than 400 sources. It's tedious having to go back through each reference in the bibliography to make sure all are uniform without the journal abbreviation.

Thanks in advance
  • adamsmith
    You can't really* customize the displayed/available Zotero fields, but you can absolutely tell the citation style to not abbreviate journal titles (by just removing form="short" on container-title), in which case whatever is in said field would be irrelevant. That should solve your issue

    * not "really" because I think it'd technically be possible to give everyone in your company a patched version of Zotero that doesn't show that field but that doesn't seem reasonably feasible
  • emilianoeheyns
    I could of course monkey-patch that in :) but that would just remove the field from display, and it wouldn't actually solve the problem. When you say "entering a journal abbreviation or zotero just autopopulates it" I think you mean it is automatically filled (sometimes) at time of import. That is done by the import translator and removing the field from display would just hide the abbreviation so obtained and make it impossible to change to boot.

    The modified style that @adamsmith points out solves the problem in a low-impact, Zotero-supported way.
  • jml512
    @adamsmith- Thank you! That is really helpful. BUT, if you were to share with me this patched version of Zotero, would I be able to share it with everyone? Would this be complicated? As much as I try to provide a Zotero usage guidelines to my colleagues, it's inevitable that a hand full of people disregard this completely. Perhaps, the issue is not with Zotero but people following instruction... haha. As I'm thinking about it more, I guess it doesn't really matter if they end up putting a journal abbreviation though. If I follow your suggestion, even if they enter an abbreviation it shouldn't show in the final bibliography, correct?

    @emilianoheyns Would it be possible to do both? Remove the field from the display and follow adamsmith's suggestion? Ideally I want our users to have ease when inputting sources. If I could completely remove fields we don't want to use it would remove ambiguity to users and people wouldn't question to themselves "Do I need to input this or not?" Regardless, thank you! I appreciate your input :)
  • emilianoeheyns
    edited June 4, 2020
    It would be doable with a plugin, but it might not be trivial, since it would need to do invasive stuff in an area of zotero that's actually pretty difficult to modify, *and* Zotero doesn't react well to fields being gone from the item pane unexpectedly. A lot of care would need to be taken as it is easy to destabilize Zotero and cause spurious errors. Speaking from experience here. On top of that all, if an abbrev does slip in (as with a translator), you'd have no possibility to fix it. Oh and you'd have to get people to install the plugin. And upkeep, because this area of zotero is also going to change substantially, and you'd have to redo work.

    I'd recommend against it. Possible, yes. But the modified style will solve the problem, if people still type something there, it will just be ignored.
  • jml512
    @emilianoheyns hmm I see! Ok, I will follow your suggestion. I guess it doesn't really hurt our users if they input it anyway. The abbreviation not being present in the final bibliography is of higher importance. I just wanted to see if we could completely remove it :). Thanks again! I appreciate your advice.
  • emilianoeheyns
    Oh and also: the technology you'd have to interface with (Mozilla XUL/XBL) is severely under documented. If you're not familiar with those, trust me, RUN :) If you are familiar, you're probably already sprinting.

    I'm still a techie at heart, so questions that sound like "can it be done" to most sound like "is there a law of nature that precludes a solution to the problem as stipulated" to me ;)
  • jml512
    @emilianoeheyns hahah! I will take your precautionary signs and run. I'm in the sciences so I'm curious by nature. I often can't accept things at face value and I must understand the underlying reason.

    I have little experience in tech, including coding. I'm not sure why I took on this challenge to update a style code suitable for my companies use. But with great curiosity sometimes comes great reward, hopefully something will come from this experience. So people like me need people like you! I'm grateful you view things in that manner without it I'd still be banging my head on the keyboard. With that said, I'll probably need your advice some time in the near future... when I find myself in a similar situation haha.

    Take care for now,
    JML512
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