quick run through of how I handle adding records for the pdfs in the shared folder. please share advice.

zoteroworkflow.md

Race and Policing Research Zotero group.

Dropbox folder (Contact @aasewell, status, for password details)

Hi all,

I will describe how I've been using zotero to import records based on the existing PDFs in the folder.

Zotero has browser plugins and desktop clients. I use the browser plugin for Firefox and I have Zotero toolbar buttons on my browser.

Using Firefox Plugin

Prequisites

• Install Zotero Firefox plugin and add Zotero toolbar buttons to Firefox. https://www.zotero.org/support/installation
• Open the Zotero firefox tab.
• Focus on a target library folder in the Zotero tab. This will get scraped items added to that folder and not others. Screen capture of zotero tab. The Zotero buttons and the folder that has focus are highlighted with cyan.

Workflow

With zotero open and focused on the target library folder:

• Check if a PDF record already exists in the Zotero group, if it does not...
• Search in Google scholar (or other search engine) using the title, or DOI, or other search terms
• Navigate to an entry for the paper in the search results.
• Once on that page, use the Zotero scraper button. Sometimes I do this more than once because the scraper is able to get more information from another source. If this happens, move the extraneous record to the trash.
• After scraping is done, check the new entry in the Zotero browser tab to check for accuracy, missing data, etc.
• To see changes on zotero.org right away, click the sync button. It will run in the background eventually, even if you don't. sync button image

For things that aren't journal articles, you can still scrape an entry while visiting the web page. After scraping, you can edit the new entry to add missing data.

I think that people who set up PDF indexing might be able to scrape directly from PDFs, but I haven't set that up for myself. I don't know how well it works.

• What is the best way for people to check whether a document has already been processed?
• What sources out there have the best scrape-ability?

On bookmarking

Pinboard's twitter integration means that any tweet I star or retweet will get bookmarked. Later I can go through those, navigate to the page, and scrape it to my personal zotero account.

This could work well for the group too. People who discover things on twitter can bookmark them quickly, then later go through the information to select items for the group.

I am willing to bet that someone has set up a twitter to Zotero workflow, and maybe we could create a twitter folder where tweets get automatically added to be sorted out later in a curation step?

I tired going to an entry that seemed relatively complete and just practicing on that, but I also get an error that says I cannot make changes to the selected entry. I have a feeling I'm doing something wrong. Maybe you could do a video of your screen as you go through this process with one entry?