Booktitle overwrites journal field when importing from Bibtex

gduveiller
I am trying to get my Bibtex database into Zotero.

I understand that while Bibtex has two separate fields for "journal" and for "booktitle", Zotero uses only a single "Publication" field. When importing an Article entry, Zotero apparently overwrites the first field (journal) by the second (booktitle). While in most cases this should not be a problem since Article entries generally do not have a "booktitle" field, the situation arises for special issues of a journal in which case the booktitle field is used to specify the theme of the special issue. The result is the loss of the journal name.

Is there a way out of this? It would be nice if the journal name could stay as Publication and the Booktitle (i.e. special issue theme) be stored somewhere else (in the "extra" field or somewhere else).

A similar problem was mentioned elsewhere in the forum (http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/16557/missing-publication-field/) but the solution did not help in this case.
  • adamsmith
    that's an interesting case...
    It would seem a little harder to solve than the issue in the other thread (where the solution was just to ignore empty fields).
    I don't like the idea of translators writing stuff to the extra field (people are using that for all types of things), so if the title of the special issue is maintained, it should go somewhere else - but where? Series or Series title seems wrong, too.
  • gduveiller
    Another option could be to concatenate both "journal" and "booktitle" Bibtex fields into the Zotero "publication". However, this might not be desirable in all situations since sometimes it is not relevant to specify the special issue theme in a reference list. Furthemore, this contatenation needs to be implemented in the Bibtex.js importer... and I am not sure how to do that.
  • ajlyon
    Can you provide examples of citations that include the special issue theme? That might help us determine how to deal with this situation.
  • noksagt
    And maybe state where the sources come from. This is not standard practice (and the first google hit for 'booktitle "special issue" bibtex' is this thread; other hits use 'note' for the special issue topic or concatenate it onto the journal name).
  • Gracile
    I'm not sure it is related but I'm using Series Title (csl: collection-title) for special issue.

    But "Series text" might be a better choice if it becomes "section" in a future version of zotero/csl (https://github.com/ajlyon/zotero-bits/wiki/Zotero-types-whiteboard)
    Existing series fields should be clarified. At the moment, the journalArticle type has “Series”/series, “Series Title”/seriesTitle, and “Series Text”/seriesText fields. Do series and seriesTitle have distinct use scenarios? If not, is it possible to migrate series to seriesTitle non-destructively?

    * Rintze: series and seriesTitle are both mapped to collection-title, so from a CSL perspective they’re currently redundant (and I’m not aware of distinct use scenarios). Also, if there is no clear use scenario for seriesText, it could be deleted, and its contents migrated to the proposed section field (see above), so no information is lost.
    * Avram: Reviewing my database, I have never used more than one of these three fields on a single journalArticle item. If series is for things like “New Series”, how could there be more than one such value? I agree that seriesText can be migrated to the new section, and also that we should eliminate seriesTitle and move its contents to series, concatenating if necessary.
    (from: https://github.com/ajlyon/zotero-bits/wiki/Zotero-types-whiteboard)
  • gduveiller
    Here is a citation from my Bibtex database that I downloaded from ScienceDirect (in which I removed the abstract field in order to keep things simple):

    @ARTICLE{Adger2006,
    author = {Adger, W. Neil},
    title = {Vulnerability},
    journal = {Global Environmental Change},
    year = {2006},
    volume = {16},
    pages = {268--281},
    number = {3},
    month = aug,
    booktitle = {Resilience, Vulnerability, and Adaptation: A Cross-Cutting Theme
    of the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental
    Change},
    issn = {0959-3780},
    keywords = {Vulnerability, Disasters, Food insecurity, Hazards, Social-ecological
    systems, Surprise, Governance, Adaptation, Resilience}
    }

    And below is the result when I drag and drop the citation from Zotero (after importing it from bibtex):

    1. W. Neil Adger, “Vulnerability,” Resilience, Vulnerability, and Adaptation: A Cross-Cutting Theme of the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change 16, no. 3 (August 2006): 268–281.

    And finally this is what I would like to have (i.e. keep the journal name and just store the special issue theme somewhere in Zotero, but I wouldn't want it in the default citation):

    1. W. Neil Adger, “Vulnerability,” Global Environmental Change 16, no. 3 (August 2006): 268–281.
  • Gracile
    As I said above, I'm using "Series title" to specify the theme of a special issue (actually I'm also using "series title" for what I called "section", more details here).

    As adamsmith said, it's not an orthodox solution (because special issue is not a series in the same sense that book belongs to Series ). But Series title is mapped and I need a mapping.

    Could we find a better solution?
    Let's look how Zotero is using Series, Series Title, Series Text and Series Number.
    According to Frank's CSL/Zotero Metadata Field Index:
    • Series (csl: collection-title):
      • book
      journalArticle
      encyclopediaArticle
      dictionaryEntry

    • Series Title (csl: collection-title):
      • journalArticle
      computerProgram
      report
      podcast
      videoRecording

    • Series Number (csl: collection-number):
      • book
      dictionaryEntry
      encyclopediaArticle

    • Series Text (csl: no mapping):
      • journalArticle
    Then:
    1)"Series" and "Series Title" are redundant. They have the same csl mapping (collection-title) and are never used together for one type, except for journalArticle but there is no concrete use case (see Rintze's comment in my last post)
    2)"Series text" is only used in journalArticle and is not mapped.


    Conclusion:
    I think that "Series" and "Series Title" should be merged.
    "Series text" should be replaced by two new and different fields: "section" and "Issue title" with appropriate csl mapping.

    Section would be used as it has been discussed here and there.
    Issue title would be used to specify the theme of the special issue.


    Hope that can help.
    Thanks
  • adamsmith
    Bruce will not like a field/csl variable that's just for special issues of journals - it'd be good to find a way to make that more generic (as you do with section - I'm convinced on that one).
  • Gracile
    You're right and that's why I wrote "with appropriate csl mapping": I didn't want to enter in this debate.
    And, even if it's not orthodox (conceptually), I'm perfectly happy with my use of "Series title" for issue title.
    "Issue title" can be the zotero field (with csl "collection-title" mapping). After all, I don't know any examples of citations that include the special issue theme AND the title of the collection... (but that might exist...)
  • noksagt
    Here is a citation from my Bibtex database that I downloaded from ScienceDirect
    Can you please state how you did that? Going to http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2006.02.006 (which redirects to sciencedirect) and selecting 'Export citation' and choosing to export bibtex does not give the bibtex that you have provided. It has the more often-used form that I mentioned:note = "Resilience, Vulnerability, and Adaptation: A Cross-Cutting Theme of the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change",
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