Zotero and bibtex

Paul_McNaughter
Hi,

I'm a long time user of zotero about to start writing my PhD thesis. I plan on using latex to write the document and have come across a problem. From what I can see it is possible upon a reexport for the cite id for latex to change if the library is modified. I will be writing the thesis over many months and my zotero library will be expnded. If this ruins my existing citations in m thesis I will probably jump off the chemistry department roof.

My question is what is the best existing way to maintain syncronisation between a zotero library and a bibtex .bib file?

Thanks,

Paul
  • noksagt
    The citation key is automatically generated from the bibliographic information (author, title, year) of the record. If that information changes, the citation key will change. For records that would otherwise have the same key, a disambiguation token is appended to the key. This, too, can change (depending on what subset of your library is exported and what has been added/removed). However, let me stop you before you climb up to the roof:

    Neither of these is particularly common & both are potential problems with ANY system that automatically generates keys. People have used Zotero to write large LaTeX/BibTeX articles. You should have only a small number of records to fix. If you don't want to fix ANY, you can keep a separate BibTeX file & just add to it from Zotero so that no changes in your Zotero database will be reflected in your BibTeX file (though this has an obvious disadvantage).

    Zotero will eventually support local identifiers.
  • Paul_McNaughter
    Thanks noksagt for your advice.

    A small number of errors in a bibtex file with hundreds of entries is a potential problem I really don't want to contend with. The manual method of physically maintaining a bibtex file sounds grim in comparison to the smooth operation of the Word and Open Office plugins but would remove any chance of a hard to track blunder occuring.

    It strikes me as an obvious feature for a open source citation manager to be fully compatible with latex as it is the system of choice for preparing documents in the physical sciences.

    I have stumbled across a potential solution. I have synced my library with Mendeley which syncs the library with a bibtex file. Being new to Mendeley and not trusting it yet I wondered what the zotero community thinks of this solution. I don't know if it will end up having the same potential problems as zotero. Thoughts?

    Thanks for your help,

    Paul
  • adamsmith
    you could also check out the zot2bib and lyz plugins for Zotero:
    http://www.klubko.net/wp/?page_id=945&lang=en
    http://mackerron.com/zot2bib/

    Apart from general issues of how much to trust Mendeley (I'm wary of what they're doing/going to do with user data and they have the usual "I sign away all my rights in this and future lives" EULA) I've heard that the "sync" with Zotero doesn't work flawlessly under all conditions - you may see duplicates etc. - but I'm not sure about any details there and that may be outdated information. Also note that "sync" is really a bit of a misnomer - as it's only going one way.
  • noksagt
    Neither of those can assure stable keys on database modification. The only way to do that is to have a separate field for the key.
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