Abbreviated journal title loses periods

[ryofurue]

In my Zotero database, some journal names are already abbreviated and others are not. This is just for historical reasons.

In the automatically generated bibtex file,

• the original "Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc. A" is converted to "Phil Trans Roy Soc A";
• "Progress in Oceanography" remains as is;
• "Journal of Geophysical Research, Oceans" is abbreviated to "J. Geophys. Res. Oceans"

The last example is as I expect and I like, but I need to fix the first example: I need the periods to stay. Also, I want the second example to be abbreviated.

I have "Automatically abbreviate journal title if none is set explicitly" checked under "Better BibTex" > "Export" > "Miscellaneous".

Perhaps I have some wrong settings?

[retorquere]

Generated abbreviations come from the Zotero abbreviator; I don't generate them myself, I just pass them on. If you get the same abbreviations using "create bibliography from item", you'd have to talk to Zotero. If they differ, it's something I could look into.

Perhaps I have some wrong settings?

I don't think so, as there's no setting I can think of that relates to this, but it's impossible to say without a support log. A support log would give me your current BBT settings, and a copy of the item under discussion. Without it I'd just be guessing.

[retorquere]

To fix the existing items, you can select the problematic entries (perhaps by using search for a period in the journal name), and run this code in Zotero's Javascript runner. I've tested this locally, and the script tries to be conservative (no overwrite of existing fields, and verifies the abbrev was copied over), but you still have to make sure it does what you want by running small tests first. It will only inspect & attempt to modify selected entries.

for (const item of Zotero.getActiveZoteroPane().getSelectedItems()) {
  if (!item.isRegularItem()) continue
  const publicationTitle = item.getField('publicationTitle')
  const journalAbbreviation = item.getField('journalAbbreviation')
  if (!journalAbbreviation && publicationTitle && publicationTitle.includes('.')) {
    item.setField('journalAbbreviation', publicationTitle)
    if (item.getField('journalAbbreviation') === publicationTitle) { // make sure we copied it over
      item.setField('publicationTitle', '')
      await item.saveTx()
    }
  }
}

[retorquere]

I had something like this in mind . . . If the original "journal" field included a period, it would have been imported as Zotero's "Journal Abbr" and its "Publication" field would have remained empty.

That conflicts with a few things that I have in my test suite as journal titles (provided by other BBT users):

• PublishersWeekly.com
• Multicultural perspectives (Mahwah, N.J.)
• Journal of African American studies (New Brunswick, N.J.)

and there's probably more like these

[retorquere]

I have some heuristics that will pick out the samples you provided which will be part of the next release, but these can never be complete; I must be very careful to not mess up imports for bib files that do have the abbreviations in the shortjournal field (which is always taken to be an abbreviation) before import, and that have journal titles with periods in the journal field.

[ryofurue]

Thank you for your careful discussion. Now I start to wonder . . .

What would happen if "PublishersWeekly.com" were imported into both Journal Abbr and the Publication fields?

I tested this idea. I wrote "J. Phys. Oceanogr." in both Journal Abbr and Publication fields on Zotero. In the auto-generated bibtex file, I found journal = {J. Phys. Oceanogr.}. Yey!

So, what about importing the original journal field into the two Zotero fields if the original contains a period.

This solution isn't perfect [because we wouldn't be able to have "J. Afric. Amer. studies (New Brunswick, N.J.)" for "Journal of African American studies (New Brunswick, N.J.)"], but that would be a somewhat lesser harm because the vast majority of the journal don't include a period and because having an unabbreviated journal name is better than having an abbreviated name without periods, such as "Phil Trans R Soc".

Just my two cents.

[retorquere]

The new changes try to make sure that it is somewhat likely to be an abbreviation before moving it there; the rule in the new release will be "at least two periods, no periods that are followed by a non-space character, and no spaces that are not preceded by a period". But at the end of the day, I can't second-guess the user doing the import too much, given that the user has no way to steer this second-guessing; the text being in the journal is a pretty strong hint that it should be taken to be the journal name. "J. Afric. Amer. studies (New Brunswick, N.J.)" will be taken not to be an abbreviation, unless it is in shortjournal, in which case it will always taken to be an abbreviation.

[retorquere]

BBT was abbreviating journal abbreviations that were in the publication field rather than the journal abbreviation field. Moving them there will fix it.

[retorquere]

(this repeats the earlier resolution because I can only mark toplevel posts as answer)