missing publication field

I just imported a BibTeX file, previously exported by bibliographix3. At first sight everything looked fine. But then I saw, that the publication field was empty for all articles. Books were imported correctly. How can I import the journals? I use zotero 2.0.8 in Firefox 3.6.13 on Windows 7 Home Premium, all in German.
  • Please post a sample journal article entry here -- there's probably something odd about the field choices.
  • Here is the export in AMA format with missing publication:

    1. Adler DS, Bar-Yosef O, Belfer-Cohen A, u. a. Dating the demise: Neandertal extinction and the establishment of modern humans in the southern Caucasus. 2008.

    And here is the corresponding excerpt of the BibTeX file, I imported:

    @Article{Adler232,
    author = {Adler, D. S. and Bar-Yosef, O. and Belfer-Cohen, A. and Tushabramishvili, N. and Boaretto, E. and Mercier, N. and Valladas, H. and Rink, W. J.},
    title = {Dating the demise: Neandertal extinction and the establishment of modern humans in the southern Caucasus.
    },
    keywords = { Einzeldownload ahaedofprint Aussterben},
    journal = {J Hum Evol},
    booktitle = {},
    editor = {},
    address = {},
    publisher = {},
    edition = {},
    volume = {},
    number = {},
    year = {2008},
    pages = {},
    signature = {},
    abstract = {This paper considers the recent radiometric dating ((14)C-AMS, TL, ESR) of 76 late Middle and early Upper Paleolithic samples from Ortvale Klde Rockshelter, located in the Republic of Georgia. We present a critical evaluation of each date based on its stratigraphic and archaeological context, its pretreatment and contamination history, and its resulting accuracy and precision, the goal being to establish a sound chronology for the site. Only by systematically identifying aberrant dates within a data set and isolating them from further analysis can we hope to understand cultural and biological phenomena on an accurate temporal scale. Based on the strict discard protocol outlined here, we omit 25% of the dated samples from the analysis. The remaining data speak to the lengthy tenure of Neandertals in the region, but also to their relatively rapid demise and the establishment of modern human populations approximately 38-34ka (14)C BP (42-39kacalBP(Hulu)). We compare these chronometric data with those from the neighboring sites of Bronze and Dzudzuana caves, as well as Mezmaiskaya Cave, located in the northern Caucasus. While the lack of key contextual information limit our ability to subject these other data sets to the same critical evaluation procedure, they provide the first interregional temporal assessment of the Middle to Upper Paleolithic "transition," the results of which suggest an initial expansion of modern humans into the southern Caucasus followed by expansion along the Black Sea coast and into the northern Caucasus.},
    notes = {},
    key = {Adler232}
    }

    I don't find the journal's title in any other field. Could it be, that the German translation simply does not map 'journal' to 'publication'?
    Thank you very much for your assistance
  • The culprit is the empty booktitle{} field. Zotero maps those two to the same field - I assume it just goes through the lines one by one and so overwrites the publication name with an empty entry.
    I don't know what BibTex standards say about this - I've never seen a bibtex file with many (if any?) empty brackets, though. I can't provide much as for a solution, unfortunately.
  • I'll double check, but if that's what's happening, I'll fix it. We can safely discard any empty values; no BibTeX should be depending on such an override.
  • I'm pretty sure I'm right - switching the order of journal and booktitle in the bibtex makes this work correctly - so yes, making the bibtex translator ingore empty entries seems like a good idea.
  • Some words to the background. bibliograhix3, which does not work on 64bit Windows, does not offer options for the export to BibTeX. But I could replace the emty brackets in a text editor, if you really think, this would solve the problem. Since the other fields worked fine, I had not thought of this...
  • I don't just think, I know it would work (I've tested this with your sample entry above) - but considering that you probably have a bunch of entries and so would take a long time to do that, it's probably worthwhile to wait for ajlyon to work his translator magic. He usually is pretty quick with small things like this.

    (otoh - I guess you could just do a search and replace for booktitle{} (replacing it with nothing) - and that would work pretty quickly.
  • Please go to http://github.com/ajlyon/zotero-bits/raw/master/BibTeX.js and save the file to the translators directory of your Zotero data directory (http://www.zotero.org/support/zotero_data).

    It should work, but it should be tested carefully -- there's a risk that this might break some BibTeX. If this works for you, please post here so that I can submit this change to be pushed to all users.
  • <blockquote>He usually is pretty quick with small things like this.</blockquote>
    see? :-)
  • I searched and replaced all empty brackets - but the publication fields remain empty!
    My import file looks like this now:

    @Article{Adler232,
    author = {Adler, D. S. and Bar-Yosef, O. and Belfer-Cohen, A. and Tushabramishvili, N. and Boaretto, E. and Mercier, N. and Valladas, H. and Rink, W. J.},
    title = {Dating the demise: Neandertal extinction and the establishment of modern humans in the southern Caucasus.
    },
    keywords = { Einzeldownload ahaedofprint Aussterben},
    journal = {J Hum Evol},
    booktitle = ,
    editor = ,
    address = ,
    publisher = ,
    edition = ,
    volume = ,
    number = ,
    year = {2008},
    pages = ,
    signature = ,
    abstract = {...}...

    I think it would be easiest to import tab seperated txt-files, but zotero doesn't seem to support this feature. All other export formats from bibliographix don't work at all, giving me only error messages, if I try to import them into zotero.
  • Follow my instructions above to install a new version of the BibTeX import translator. It seems to fix the issue.
  • In fact it did! The new filter seems to fix my problem. Thank you very much, ajlyon!
  • @HaMi: Glad to help!

    I think the fix is pretty innocuous, but I'd be appreciative if some of our regular BibTeX users could try some imports before I commit this patch.
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