PubMed translator not saving some e-pages

enozkan
With certain non-print journals, page numbers are being served in PubMed in the "ElocationID pii" element, rather than the "pages" element. This results in incomplete retrieval of bibliographic data for some articles.

For example, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30714901/

Using eutils, I can see that the page number is under,
db "ELocationID pii",
tag str "e42692"
(https://eutils.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/eutils/efetch.fcgi?db=pubmed&id=30714901)

For another journal that uses the same formatting as an electronic page number, it is under pages:
volume "16",
issue "5",
pages "e0251357",
(https://eutils.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/eutils/efetch.fcgi?db=pubmed&id=33961689)

It would help to implement a logic where if "pages" are not provided, "ELocationID pii" could be used to fill in Pages instead.

This is justified as NLM says "ELocationID may reside either in lieu of pagination or, for items with both print and electronic locations, in addition to the Pagination element.": https://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/licensee/elements_descriptions.html#elocationid

Thank you.
  • adamsmith
    Thanks for all the details. Issue created here: https://github.com/zotero/translators/issues/2370
  • DWL-SDCA
    @enozkan wrote:

    It would help to implement a logic where if "pages" are not provided, "ELocationID pii" could be used to fill in Pages instead.

    @adamsmith I interpret the github issue and comment you posted you express a preference for page numbers. However, the suggestion (which I wholeheartedly endorse) is for PubMed records that do not have page numbers but only have an article number in the "ELocationID pii" field that isn't imported to Zotero.
  • adamsmith
    no, I understood that. The question I raised on the github issue is about how to import ELocationID in Zotero. As I say, we'd currently import it as "Pages" and I think that's probably the right approach, but if citation styles want article IDs handled differently from page numbers (which I believe we've seen a couple of times), then they'd have to be stored in a different field, most likely something mapping to CSL number rather than CSL page.
  • enozkan
    Thank you for looking into it.

    It's tricky. But whether an electronic page number is stored as "Pages" or "ELocationID pii" appears to be completely arbitrary. The two examples I gave above are cases where they are used with the exact same meaning (simply e-identifiers, but not page numbers on their pdfs), but yet they are stored differently. I believe the choice is up to the journal when they deposit the data. Since their intended use/meanings appear to be identical, treating them differently and storing them in different Zotero fields does not make much sense to me.

    I understand the argument about those few citation styles, but I also can't see how Zotero could decide whether a page number or eLocationID pii is a true article ID or page number given lack of uniformity on how they are stored in PubMed.

    There are also silly cases where both Pages and an ELocationID pii are filled in, sometimes in odd ways: https://eutils.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/eutils/efetch.fcgi?db=pubmed&id=32710857
    PubMed records are clearly less uniform than I initially thought they'd be.
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