+1 for me too. Thank you bwiernik for the workaround. Mendeley does this, but with no option for undo (at least to my knowledge). Since, retrieving the metadata is not always successful, this is always risky. I hope some day zotero developers will implement it successfully.
A little confused. I saw a note saying this has already been implemented in Zotero 6, but I can't figure out how to use it? What is the status of this and if it is there already, how does it work?
At a semi-tangent: If you’re ok to use the command line and zotero api, I’ve got a very rudimentary tool for articles with DOI, which fetches metadata from Crossref and fills in blank fields. I.e., you pass the script the zotero id, and the rest is automatic. I use this where e.g. the issue number is missing, but the DOI is present. If people are interested, I’m happy to share. (The tool uses zotero-lib, see GitHub). (I guess it’s a command line version of this https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/75796/how-to-retrieve-and-update-metadata-in-zotero - however, the item isn’t replaced, and only missing fields are filled in.)
https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/comment/400492/#Comment_400492
(Just good to know before I spend time writing a plugin, would be worth it if it's another year or so.)
Incidentally, this thread started in 2018, with a similar thread in 2014 https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/35954/whats-the-quickest-way-of-adding-bibliographic-information-e-g-from-google-scholar.
Would love to see this addressed :)
Also, +1 to the backup copy. One of our plugins (edtechhub) also does keep a backup in a note for merges.
Cheers,
E.