Abstract field missing

shane.lindsay
Zotero appears to be missing an abstract field (e.g. for a journal article). Its an important and useful part of a reference, and is supported by other reference management systems, so I am not sure why its missing from zotero. Can it be added?
  • shane.lindsay
    Ahh, I haven't been using it for long, so I have seen that sometimes the abstract gets added as a note depending on where imported from, but sometimes it doesn't.
  • TessaC
    I second the desire for the ability to import abstracts. Very important to me.

    I would prefer to have the abstract as a separate field (from notes) so that I could just have my personal notes in that field but will use notes as a workaround.

    Is there a code that would pull it from the RIS file and put it in the notes field? For instance, if you stick in 'KY - ' in front of some words, zotero puts them in as tags (which is really cool).
  • dstillman
    We'll be adding support for abstracts as a special kind of note in an upcoming release.
  • shane.lindsay
    Great. I would presume that you will get it work with import and export to other formats. I look forward to this feature, as I won't be using Zotero until this is added.
  • peterm
    Let me second that. Zotero is an exceptional piece of software and will be extremely useful for research. The only thing preventing me from using it right now is its inability to handle abstracts, which are crucial for researchers. Beyond that, it's cumbersome to use without some kind of integration with word processors. I could use it now to collect information, but would then have to export the references to my old copy of Endnotes in order to format papers. I eagerly await a version of Zotero that provides these two bits of functionality.
  • ericr
    The ultimate destination for the citations I harvest with Zotero is JabRef BibTeX storage. I had success using Zotero to import (and subsequently export) abstracts with the following approach:

    From the ScienceDirect site, I asked to export citation and abstract in RIS format. Zotero happily captures those. I then export these citations out of Zotero again using RIS format. I then edit the resulting file, changing the tag of the note field from "N1" to "AB." I can then import this edited file into JabRef with the abstract field intact and recognized as an abstract.
  • JeremyAnderson
    Under the Info tab there is now an Abstract field (good) and pretty often Zotero imports abstracts when they are available (also good). But the abstract never seems to get imported into the Abstracts field along with the other info. Instead, it goes into a separate Note for the item. Thus the Abstracts field can only be used if I manually cut and paste the abstract from the Note to the Abstract field. One contributor on this forum likes the Note approach, but I don't. If that user could tell me the advantage of the Note approach I might change my mind. (Maybe one advantage is that having it in a Note means that abstracts get searched along with all other Notes in Advanced Search.) In the meanwhile, would it be possible in a future release to allow users, in Preferences, to select where abstracts are imported to?
  • dstillman
    edited April 22, 2010
    Jeremy: This is a 3.5-year-old thread. Start a new one. And your premise is incorrect.

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