Importing Literature via different identifiers results in different entries

Hi all,

we are currently exploring on how to effectively integrate the Zotero ecosystem in our medical knowledge management.

Something that we came across is that when importing literature via DOI (web-client, installed client or API) we do not get alternative identifiers back, but some information about the publisher. However, when importing the same literature via PMID we do get the alternative identifiers in the extra field as shown in the following screenshots.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u7844346/fk6hctppcuyb5nxbfd9b.png
https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u7844346/bvx3ha947vpgr9b80gvk.png

We understand that returned objects depend on the zotero-translator (https://github.com/zotero/translators/tree/master) implementation, but are there any best practices handling multiple identifiers in Zotero? The extra field seems to be only a semi ideal way to do this or are we overlooking something?

Best,
Stefan
  • Labeled variables in Extra (such as the three examples in your case) are picked up in citation styles, so they work fine. They'll also be migrated once the corresponding fields are added in Zotero, so they're the best way to add additional variables.

    There's generally no big problem with having slightly different metadata depending on the source; if you want PMID and PMCID consistently, there's a plugin for that: https://github.com/retorquere/zotero-pmcid-fetcher
  • Nice to know about the compatibility of the field with citation styles that definitely will help our use case!

    Also thanks for the hint with the pmcid fetcher, we will investigate if we can make use of it.
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