"für" in journal name
This is a super minor quibble :-)
I have "Zeitschrift für Naturforschung A" in the `Publication` field field of an entry. When Better BibTeX exports it to a `.bib` file, it's converted to "Z. F\"ur Naturforschung A"---Note the capital "F".
Is it easy to prevent this capitalization without preventing the abbreviation? (I don't think it's normal to capitalize "für" in a journal name, any more than "of" is capitalized in "Journal of XXX".)
I have "Zeitschrift für Naturforschung A" in the `Publication` field field of an entry. When Better BibTeX exports it to a `.bib` file, it's converted to "Z. F\"ur Naturforschung A"---Note the capital "F".
Is it easy to prevent this capitalization without preventing the abbreviation? (I don't think it's normal to capitalize "für" in a journal name, any more than "of" is capitalized in "Journal of XXX".)
If it's not for too many items, you can set the Zotero
Journal Abbr
field, that will always take precedence.> I haven't yet found a style that actually outputs abbreviated journal
Can you elaborate on that? I did obtain the abbreviation "Z." in .bib from "Zeitschrift" in the Zotero database. The "Journal Abbr" field of this entry is empty. What "style" am I using?
For that matter, I've almost never obtained abbreviations from other, more familiar to me, journals. I've been wondering why.
In the context of bibtex exports, you are not using a (CSL) style at all.
Oh. I thought it took a form of a "table", which you can look at. Do you mean it's an "algorithm" expressed in a source code?
If so, the algorithm is seriously broken. It converts "Zeitschrift" to "Z." but it doesn't convert "Journal" to "J." . . .
That would solve the mystery I've been long wondering about. I had never seen a journal name abbreviated until I stumbled upon this instance. But, I assumed that the names weren't in the table and all I had to do was to contribute to the table to fix the problem . . .
Do you know where to find a documentation or discussion of the abbreviator?
> If it's not for too many items,
It's for too many items. If the abbreviator can't be fixed any time soon, I would eventually need to do something about it. It would be nice if the user could supply a table of conversion.
Yours isn't in the lookup table though, all "Naturfor"-containing journals are
"zeitschrift fur naturforschung section c biosciences": "Z. Naturforsch. [C]",
I don't, sorry. One of the Zotero devs will have to chime in on this one. If this table isn't big, a postscript could do this as a workaround."zeitschrift fur naturforschung section c journal of biosciences": "Z. Naturforsch. [C]",
"zeitschrift fur naturforschung teil b anorganische chemie organische chemie biochemie biophysik biologie": "Z. Naturforsch. [B]",
"zeitschrift fur naturforschung teil b chemie biochemie biophysik biologie verwandte gebiete": "Z. Naturforsch. B",
- add the entry with Zeitschrift für Naturforschung A in a blank word document
- set style to AMA 11
- create bibliography
and you get1. Author. Some title. Z Für Naturforschung A. Published online 2014.
If that gets fixed in Zotero, BBT will automatically pick that up.
Oh my god. Thank you for the information!
> If that gets fixed in Zotero
Okay, I'll submit a request if nobody has (and if there is a channel to submit a report or request).
Now, I'll work on the following:
> a postscript could do this as a workaround
Thank you very much for your advice. This is really necessary. I can't keep producing reference lists that show unabbreviated journal names.
But then, I guess I would have to manually (or by writing a script) sync the .bib file with Overleaf through its git interface. . . . (I'm meaning to migrate to Overleaf but this bib issue is the biggest nuisance. But as I said earlier, I thought the problem was merely the lack of my familiar journals in the conversion table!)
When I was using my hand-edited .bib file, I used `@string`s for journal names. When I migrated to Zotero, I expanded those `@string`s to unabbreviated journal names, *because I read the advertisement that Zotero automatically abbreviates journal names!* It's too late now.
Also, if you use the Zotero browser plugin, the full, unabbreviated journal name is pulled in to the Publication field.
As an aside, I'm really surprised by all this. Does this mean that only a tiny fraction of Zotero users use LaTeX?
I only learned this recently myself, in this discussion on this forum
You can submit requests through this forum
https://retorque.re/zotero-better-bibtex/exporting/auto/#git-support
The standard Zotero-Overleaf integration uses the Zotero bibtex exporter. AFAIK, that only uses explicit journal abbreviations, not generated abbreviation. They would simply be empty through that route.
I really can't say. There's enough users to make working on BBT feel like a valued effort.
That would, of course, be a great help! . . . but it'd be a classic re-inventing-the-wheel situation for you. . . .
Because the "abbreviator" code is already there, (I can imagine that) it'd be a matter of applying it to the bibtex exporter (including for the Zotero-Overleaf integration).
[By the way, how did you produce the quoting symbol when you quoted my words? This forum doesn't seem to adopt the markdown markups.]
<blockquote> </blockquote>
[By the way, are you the Pascal I know?]
<zotero data dir>/abbreviations.json
, and Zotero will pick it up during startup.I've also found that none of the journals I regularly use is found in the list! Thanks for the information! After locally testing my edits, however, I guess I should also contribute them to the original by a pull request? I ask this because I've never contributed to an open source project in this way and I barely know how to use git.
abbreviations.json
and I now want to test it but I haven't been able to locate the directory you mention. I searched~/Library/Application Support/Zotero/
,~/Library/Caches/Zotero/
, and/Applications/Zotero.app/
but haven't found anyabbreviations.json
. (I'm on macOS 13.2 .)~/Zotero/
.I'm now successful in abbreviating the journal names, except a colon in a journal name seems to be preventing Zotero from abbreviating that journal name, if I'm not missing something. . . .
"Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans" is the official name of the journal and the Zotero browser plugin records that exact name in the
Publication
field.Do you know the "grammar" of this table? Does a colon have to be escaped? (I could look at the source code of the program.)
The below is a simplified version of my
abbreviations.json
.{
"info": {
"URI": "http://www.zotero.org/abbreviations/default.json",
"name": "MEDLINE + Title Word Abbreviations"
},
"default": {
"container-title": {
"journal of geophysical research: oceans": "J. Geophys. Res. Oceans",
"journal of physical oceanography": "J. Phys. Oceanogr.",
"zeitschrift für naturforschung a": "Z. Naturforsch. A"
},
"container-title-word": {
}
}
}
"journal of geophysical research oceans": "J. Geophys. Res. Oceans",
.I've found another piece of "grammar": Remove the word "and". So,
Doesn't work . . ."dynamics of atmosphere and oceans": "Dyn. Atmos. Oceans",
Works . . . "dynamics atmosphere oceans": "Dyn. Atmos. Oceans",
Doesn't work . . . "journal of geophysical research: oceans": "J. Geophys. Res. Oceans",
Works . . . "journal of geophysical research oceans": "J. Geophys. Res. Oceans",
There might be other pieces of "grammar" but so far, I'm happy.
[By the way, during testing, I've found this problem: BBT freezes with "Preparing" if
abbreviations.json
includes some error. I've made two types of error so far: forgetting the comma at the end of an entry and adding a comma at the end of the last entry.]I think the next step is to include more entries to the table and merge it to the official version of
abbreviations.json
. Then, I suppose Overleaf will automatically get the abbreviated journal names (if the user has selected automatic abbreviation).I've found a database of abbreviations on the Net. All ~20 journals I wanted abbreviations for were on it. None of them is abbreviated by Zotero by default. That suggests that Zotero's current abbreviation table probably misses a large fraction of journals out there.
So, I'm thinking of downloading some large table and merging it to Zotero's current table using a script.
But then, I think it's better to contact the person who wrote the original
abbreviations.json
because she or he must have used some script, which, among other things, removed the colons and "and"s. There may be other "grammars"."dynamics of atmospheres oceans": "Dyn. Atmos. Oceans",
for the journal "Dynamics of Atmospheres and Oceans". This abbreviation sometimes works and sometimes doesn't.
I change the "volume" of a bibliographic entry and re-generate the .bib file and find the abbreviated form "Dyn. Atmos. Oceans" in the corresponding bib entry. I change the "volume" again, re-generate the .bib file, and find "Dynamics Of Atmospheres Oceans" there. Note the lack of "and" here.
So, the name-match algorithm must have some bug in there. I guess that the code first removes the "and" from the journal name and tries to find a match in the table. Sometimes it finds a match and sometimes it doesn't.
Perhaps whether a match is found or not depends on history. (There is hysteresis. The match algorithm is stateful.) I suspect hysteresis because I have multiple bibliographic entries having this journal name. Some of them gets the abbreviation and the others don't.
WRT the hang, I suspect that's because the error interrupts the zotero load, and bbt must wait for the zotero load to finish, so it appears to hang. BBT just shows its startup progress, so that's where you see it happening.