This generally means that the RIS file being produced by the site specified authors incorrectly, resulting in a huge long string of names. When you use the save button, Zotero usually corrects this kind of thing, but that doesn't happen if you export to a file first. If you can provide an example search that produces this file, we can see if we can do something to correct it going forward, or we may be able to tell you a find/replace you could run to fix the names in the file in order to reimport them. (You can delete the whole batch of items you already imported by sorting the items list by Date Added.)

@pbragge: Same answer as above — if you just imported these and can tell us where they came from, we can see if we can work around the incorrect output or tell you how to do a find/replace in the file, and you can delete the entire batch of incorrect items at once.

There's no way other than scripting to delete all editor fields. This is likely legitimate data that was just incorrectly formatted, so simply deleting it wouldn't be appropriate.

No, if you just save via the Zotero Connector this should pretty much never happen. If it does, and you can reproduce it now saving one of the affected items from one of the original sites, we'd want to know. But it was almost certainly the process of transferring the items via EndNote that did it. If you still have the RIS/BibTeX/etc. file you exported from EndNote, you can open that in a text editor (e.g., Notepad or TextEdit), find the record for one of the affected items, and post it here so we can look at it and tell you how to fix them in batch.

I have reproduced the error with a direct import from the .ris file into a shared document collection. The field generating the error is the 'editor' field which should not even exist for a journal article, and especially since the journal article in question has only one author (https://academic.oup.com/socpro/article-abstract/60/3/302/1680066?redirectedFrom=fulltext). I'd love to share the output of the text edit, but I can't because it exceeds the character limit for this chat. But I can tell you that the error appears to be that the entire reference list of the article is being imported and jammed somehow into the 'editor' field.

Here's a truncated excerpt of the output. Can you please tell me how I can upload / otherwise share files in this forum?

118.
TY - JOUR
ID - 2013-28549-002
DO - https://dx.doi.org/10.1525/sp.2013.60.3.302
T1 - Constructing the model immigrant: Movement strategy and immigrant deservingness in the New Sanctuary Movement.
A1 - Yukich, Grace
A2 - Alba, Allman, Avery, Batstone, Benford, Benford, Brotherton, Calavita, Capetillo-Ponce, Chavez, Chin, Chiricos, Chong, Corrigall-Brown, Cunningham, Dalton, Diani, Edelman, Foner, Fox, Fried, Fujiwara, Gilens, Goffman, Halfmann, Hays, Hondagneu-Sotelo, Hondagneu-Sotelo, Hoose, Jasper, Jasper, Kane, Kapur, Kim, Kim, King, Lee, Leitz, Marrow, Matesan, Min, Nepstad, O'Reilly, Ovando, Page, Pallares, Paschel, Perez, Petersen, Portes, Preston, Puga, Reese, Saito, Smith, Smith, Smith, Snow, Staudt, Tichenor, Voss, Warner, Waters, Welch, Welch, Wellman, Wuthnow, Yoo, Yoon, Yukich, Yukich
Y1 - 2013//
N1 - Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association. 2010. A previous version of this article was presented at the aforementioned conference.
N2 - The model minority stereotype has been widely criticized for creating distinctions between racial groups by depicting some as more deserving than others. Immigration scholars have begun exploring similar distinctions among immigrant groups, with most research highlighting the role of anti-immigrant forces, the media, and policymakers in constructing divisions. Ethnographic research on the New Sanctuary Movement, a network of interfaith immigrant rights organizations, reveals that pro-immigrant activists also construct distinctions between "deserving" and "undeserving" immigrants. Building on frame alignment theory, which often focuses on movement discourse, I use a dramaturgical approach to highlight the nonrhetorical framing practices involved in creating these distinctions: in particular, the casting of select members of stigmatized groups and their public and visual association with more powerful actors. Through a type of frame transformation I call the model movement strategy-the use of model cases to challenge negative stereotypes of members of disadvantaged groups-New Sanctuary activists drew distinctions between model immigrants and those who did not share their dominant-friendly characteristics, implicitly portraying certain undocumented immigrants as less deserving of legal residency and citizenship. These findings suggest that the model movement strategy, an approach used by a variety of contemporary social movements, may have insidious consequences for the most vulnerable movement constituents. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved)
KW - *Activism
KW - *Immigration
KW - *Policy Making
KW - *Racial and Ethnic Groups
KW - *Social Movements
KW - Stereotyped Attitudes
KW - Strategies
M3 - Social Processes & Social Issues [2900]
JF - Social Problems
VL - 60
IS - 3
SP - 302
EP - 320
CY - US
PB - University of California Press
PB - US
SN - 0037-7791
AD - Yukich, Grace: Quinnipiac University, Department of Sociology, 275 Mount Carmel Ave., Hamden, CT, US, 06518, grace.yukich@quinnipiac.edu
AD - Yukich, Grace: grace.yukich@quinnipiac.edu
M1 - Alba, R., & Nee, V. 1997. "Rethinking Assimilation Theory for a New Era of Immigration." International Migration Review 31:826-74.
M1 - Allman, D. D., & Beaty, M. D. (eds.). 2002. Cultivating Citizens: Soulcraft and Citizenship in Contemporary America. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
M1 - Avery, J. M., & Peffley, M. 2003. "Race Matters: The Impact of News Coverage of Welfare Reform on Public Opinion." Pp. 131-50 in Race and the Politics of Welfare Reform, edited by S. Schram, J. Soss, and R. Fording. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
M1 - Batstone, D., & Mendieta, E. (eds.). 1999. The Good Citizen. London, UK: Routledge.
M1 - Benford, R. D., & Snow, D. A. 2000. "Framing Processes and Social Movements: An Overview and Assessment." Annual Review of Sociology 26:611-39.
M1 - Benford, R. D., & Hunt, S. A. 1992. "Dramaturgy and Social Movements: The Social Construction and Communication of Power." Sociological Inquiry 62:36-55.

But that's not the RIS output from that OUP page? The RIS from that page doesn't have that problem. So I'm not sure where you're getting that RIS file.

In any case, that's obviously just incorrect RIS output from wherever you're getting it, and you'd want to report it to the source in question. Zotero is handling it according to the RIS spec, which for A2 and similar fields says, "Each author must be on a separate line, preceded by the tag that corresponds to the author role".

(We could consider truncating automatically at 255 characters, since the RIS spec also says that it "can contain up to 255 characters for each field", but a better solution would probably be to add a wizard like we have for long tags that allows splitting/deleting incorrectly concatenated strings like these, since sometimes these might be valid authors or editors.)

You could fix this with find/replace in the file, but since you've already imported it, here's some code to fix it. Select all potentially affected items in Zotero and run this from Tools → Developer → Run JavaScript, which should delete any creators with a Last Name field longer than 255 characters:

var items = ZoteroPane.getSelectedItems();
for (let item of items) {
if (!item.isRegularItem()) continue;
let modified = false;
for (let i = 0; i < item.getCreators().length; i++) {
if (item.getCreators()[i].lastName.length > 255) {
item.removeCreator(i);
i--;
modified = true;
}
}
if (modified) {
await item.saveTx();
}
}

I'd recommend making a backup of zotero.sqlite in your Zotero data directory and temporarily disabling auto-sync before running it.

ps I have run the code but it doesn't seem to have done anything. the message I get is "===>undefined<=== (undefined)"

Can you also tell me how to disable sync?

I have disabled syncing, selected all the articles in the library and run the code. All that happens is I get the message "===>undefined<=== (undefined)" . How long should I allow for this code to work through the library (10,030 citations) and how can I check if it is running or not?

This works for me to split the names into individual creators, but very much do backup before trying this, and very much try it on a few single items first

for (let item of ZoteroPane.getSelectedItems()) {
if (!item.isRegularItem()) continue

let modified = false
var creators = []
for (const creator of item.getCreators()) {
if (creator.lastName.length <= 255) {
creators.push(creator)
}
else {
for (const lastName of creator.lastName.split(/\s*,\s*/).filter(n => n)) {
creators.push({ creatorTypeID: creator.creatorTypeID, lastName })
}
modified = true
}
}
if (modified) {
item.setCreators(creators)
await item.saveTx()
}
}

Fair enough.

See Changes Not Syncing.

Don't worry about that — you've mentioned that twice already, and I'd obviously tell you if it was wrong. As I've said, just look at the long creator in the item you've selected. If the Last Name is longer than 255 characters, it should just disappear when you run this code. (If the problem is in the First Name field, this code would need to be adjusted slightly.)

The two creator fields are "(last)" and "(first)". Which are you saying is the long one?

Anyway, run this code, which will check both fields, and let us know what it gives for a result:

var log = [];
var items = ZoteroPane.getSelectedItems();
for (let item of items) {
if (!item.isRegularItem()) continue;
log.push("===========\nChecking " + item.getDisplayTitle());
let modified = false;
for (let i = 0; i < item.getCreators().length; i++) {
let creator = item.getCreators()[i];
let creatorStr = `'${creator.firstName}' '${creator.lastName}'`;
if (creator.firstName.length > 255 || creator.lastName.length > 255) {
log.push(` - Removing ${creatorStr}`);
item.removeCreator(i);
i--;
modified = true;
}
else {
log.push(` - Not removing ${creatorStr}`);
}
}
if (modified) {
await item.saveTx();
}
}
return log.join("\n");

Hi dstillman - thanks again for the code. I've now run it across the library (had to do it in a few batches) and it has now fully synced with the online version - no mean feat with a library over 10,000 citations!

Hi Folks, Is there a quick fix for this for the non-coders among us? I also have an exported APA PsycInfo list of about 250+ papers and the first name of the editor is always too long because it contains a long list of authors. Any fix that doesn't involve individual amendments to each paper?

Thanks. I managed to remove them manually after I sent my previous message. Hopefully a bug that APA PsycInfo can resolve.