BBT uses the Zotero journal abbreviator, so that's where it comes from -- it should turn up the same when Zotero uses it, but I haven't yet found a style that actually outputs abbreviated journal titles to check.

If it's not for too many items, you can set the Zotero Journal Abbr field, that will always take precedence.

The abbreviator is built into Zotero, it's not something you can look at as such. I know there are citation styles that use abbreviated journal titles, and I know that Zotero can sometimes abbreviate full titles when no abbreviated title has been entered by the user. I just don't know what set of circumstances employs it, so I cannot test/demonstrate it.

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?

It's both. There's a lookup table, and if the journal is not found there, it runs an algorithm.

Yours isn't in the lookup table though, all "Naturfor"-containing journals are

"zeitschrift fur naturforschung section c biosciences": "Z. Naturforsch. [C]",
"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",


Do you know where to find a documentation or discussion of the abbreviator?

I don't, sorry. One of the Zotero devs will have to chime in on this one.

It would be nice if the user could supply a table of conversion.

If this table isn't big, a postscript could do this as a workaround.

> apparently the abbreviator is only used in the wordprocessor plugins

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 could also add a feature to BBT to load a list of abbreviations from a csv file. If that's interesting for you, please open an issue on github.

[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.]

Use HTML element instead <blockquote> </blockquote>

This is the default list of abbreviations, and if I understand the source code correctly, you can edit this file and place it in <zotero data dir>/abbreviations.json, and Zotero will pick it up during startup.

You'd have to ask here on the forums, or just submit a change and see whether it's picked up. Usually you don't have to know git, but the file is apparently too large for the Github web editor.

you can edit this file and place it in <zotero data dir>/abbreviations.json,

I've edited 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 any abbreviations.json. (I'm on macOS 13.2 .)

You can find your data dir under prefs -> advanced -> files & folders -> show data directory.

Aha! It turns out it's ~/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": {
}
}
}


remove the colon

You are right!

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".

All of those are questions for the zotero devs. I can't speak authoritively on any of them, although I could make a script for you that applies the "grammar" and adds it to the json safely.

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.