Passing citation information via web api

sacharya21
Hello,
We are looking to provide users with a zotero link on our library so that on clicking the zotero link, logged in users can seamlessly get the citation information on the zotero website (not necessarily through plug in)
I need to provide developers the API information to pass citation information to the site..Can you please provide this information for us to work further?
  • dstillman
    Could you explain why you're looking to do this?

    This is possible for ZoteroBib, but it doesn't make sense for Zotero. Zotero is a local program that saves data locally, and there's no guarantee that someone even has a Zotero account.

    Even if you were sure that every single person wanting to save from your site had a Zotero account, the whole point of Zotero saving is that users don't need to look for ways to export the data on the page — they just need to click the save button in their browser's toolbar. Offering a way to do this on the page is likely to confuse people by showing a second option — or, worse, make new users think that sites without such buttons are somehow less supported by Zotero.

    We recognize that this prevents Zotero from being listed along with other similar tools, and we've talked about offering some sort of embeddable button that would trigger proper Zotero saving when the Zotero Connector was installed, but nothing like that exists now, and it wouldn't entirely avoid the problems I mention above.
  • adamsmith
    (to optimize functionality for the Zotero connector for your site/catalog see https://www.zotero.org/support/dev/exposing_metadata )
  • sacharya21
    Hi,
    I am not sure what zoterobib is? Our main problem is yes we want zotero listed along with similar tools. We already have Mendeley and RefWorks which allow us to send them our citation metadata information and users (if logged in) can seamlessly view the citation information there.
    There will be sizeable number of people who would not have the browser extension installed. So will the embeddable button you are talking about copy the citation info into the browser plug in (for people who have installed the plug in) ? How would the behaviour of the embeddable button be for users who do not have the plug in?

    Looking forward to your reply,

    Thanks,
    Shilpa
  • dstillman
    ZoteroBib: https://zbib.org/
    There will be sizeable number of people who would not have the browser extension installed.
    What makes you think that? Nearly all Zotero users will have the browser extension installed, because that's how you save to Zotero. As a site operator, you should make sure that you expose standard metadata that Zotero can read, or you can work with us to make sure there's a translator for your site.

    The lack of a Zotero button is arguably a marketing problem for us, but it's not a problem for you as a site operator. Zotero users will know how to save to Zotero.
  • sacharya21
    Thank you for your reply. Can we provide a link on our browser citation modal window which when clicked opens up the zotero plug in from the browser? This way it will be a seamless experience for our users as you confirm that users who use zotero will have the plug in installed.
    I have spoken to developers and can confirm that the citation information is present in the meta tags in the html so that zotero can then pick it up. In fact Google Scholar also similarly picks up the citation info from the meta tags.
    Looking forward to your suggestion.
  • dstillman
    I can't really say more on this. I've explained how Zotero is meant to be used and how Zotero users will expect to use it.
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