DOI entry

AM-Z
When I save research articles in Zotero, I see that an entry labelled "DOI" is automatically saved.
This seems to have information about the web page/source from where the article was originally sourced.
The DOI information is included while generating bibliographies.
How do I prevent this from being generated? I don't want to delete the DOI entry, as it could be useful for later reference.
Thanks!
  • hughp3
    You could manually edit your bibliography later, but DOIs are generally accepted as being a valid part of the citation in many stylesheets.
  • bwiernik
    This is controlled by the citation style you use. You could edit the style to remove the DOI. However, the DOI is the single most important part of the citations—with it, your readers can quickly get to the item online, and it is used by publishers to accurately link references and track citations. The majority of journals will ask you to provide the DOI if you don’t include it, so I recommend leaving it in place.
  • AM-Z
    Oh, I see. In the social science journals I don't see DOI information cited anywhere. Do you mean that the editors will want it to cross-check references, but not include it for final publication?
  • AM-Z
    So, how do I edit the style sheet? I clicked the button for editing styles, and it brings up coding. I am not sure I can handle this.

    Btw, I am using Chicago manual of style 17th edition (author-date) to generate my biblios.

    Thanks
  • adamsmith
    edited July 4, 2020
    In the social science journals I don't see DOI information cited anywhere.
    Note sure what field you're referring to specifically, but the American Political Science Review, the American Economic Review, the Journal of Peasant Studies, and all APA journals in Psychology (i.e. arguably the leading journals in 4 out of 5 classical social science disciplines), all use DOIs even in printed volumes. APSR , JPS, and AER actually use (more or less) Chicago author-date style and the Chicago Manual is pretty clear that you should be using DOIs for everything you consult electronically, which presumably is pretty much everything these days.

    If you really don't want DOIs (but again, there's really not a good reason not to), you could look at the American Sociological Association style, e.g., which is fairly similar to Chicago style with some idiosyncrasies and no DOIs.
  • AM-Z
    I was thinking of History, Sociology, and Anthropology. The articles I see don't have DOI info cited in the bibliography entries.

    So, I want to keep the DOI entry intact, but not have it generate along with the other details, I need to shift to a different style?

    Thanks
  • bwiernik
    I recommend you follow the style of the journal you are submitting to. If Zotero has a style for that journal and includes a DOI, it’s problem at that request of the journal. As suggested above, the DOI is probably the single most important piece of information in a reference for contemporary scholarship.
  • adamsmith
    To be clear, it's _possible_ to modify existing styles to remove the DOI but it's a bit involved, in particular for Chicago style, so I'd recommend against it -- if you're dead set against using DOIs, the best recommendation is indeed to find an existing citation style that doesn't use
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