---
layout: post
status: publish
published: true
title: Converting Zotero Documents to Mendeley
wordpress_id: 462
wordpress_url: http://www.martineve.com/?p=462
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categories:
- Technology
- Open Access
- Academia
tags:
- zotero
- Mendeley
- OpenOffice
- Word
- Reference Management
comments:
- id: 4013
author: Tweets that mention Converting Zotero Documents to Mendeley | Martin Paul
Eve -- Topsy.com
author_email: ''
author_url: http://topsy.com/www.martineve.com/2010/12/08/converting-zotero-documents-to-mendeley/?utm_source=pingback&utm_campaign=L2
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content: ! '[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Doctoral School, Martin
Eve. Martin Eve said: New blog post: Converting Zotero Documents to Mendeley http://martineve.com/?p=462
#phdchat #phd [...]'
- id: 4029
author: adam.smith
author_email: karcher@u.northwestern.edu
author_url: ''
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content: ! "From what I can see you're not quite right about Mendeley winning the
hearts and minds - I think it's a geography thing. Zotero is hugely, hugely more
popular in the US. It's not even close. And I assume you're right that Mendeley
is increasingly more popular in the UK - which would just mean that it's easier
to reach out to the scientific community of the country you're in. \r\n\r\nZotero
and Mendeley will be one step closer to interoperability once they both use the
citerproc.js citation generator for csl 1.0. But that still leaves a lot of issues,
including how to match identifiers and, apparently, how to address the additional
information Zotero allows you to add to citations - which is indeed critical.
I think the former is actually much harder to do, the latter, if that's really
the case, just seems to be a limitation of Mendeley that they need to fix to make
the software useful for anyone in the social sciences and humanities."
- id: 4055
author: Martin Paul Eve
author_email: martin@martineve.com
author_url: ''
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content: ! "Hi Adam,\r\n\r\nThanks for that - as you say, I'm working from a UK
perspective and, from what I hear, Mendeley gets huge uptake relative to Zotero
although I personally use the latter.\r\n\r\nThe identifier matching shouldn't
really be a problem. If both plugins exposed the correct APIs, then all that is
needed is for Mendeley, on import, to store the Zotero identifier in an internal
field of its own for that specific user prior to document conversion.\r\n\r\nI
hadn't heard about the citerproc.js plan, but is there, technically, any reason
why both sets couldn't use the same document plugin system? Admittedly, this would
probably have to end up being LGPL licensed so as to fit with Mendeley's proprietary
nature, but would be a huge step forward in terms of interoperability. At the
moment, reference systems seem to compete on unequal grounds. Once you've got
far enough into a piece to know whether you like a system, you are unlikely to
want to convert to another. If this lock-in was eliminated, they could compete
on grounds of features and user interface.\r\n\r\n(P.S. I'm really pleased about
US uptake of Zotero -- I'm a big fan, although, as I say, I'd still like to know
of and see how Mendeley progresses)"
- id: 4062
author: adam.smith
author_email: karcher@u.northwestern.edu
author_url: ''
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content: ! "I think the problem with the plugin would be that it also has to work
with the internal data model of the respective software - things like Zotero groups
(and whatever Mendeley has in that respect) would probably be an additional challenge.\r\n\r\nI
think a (very) longterm plan for Zotero is to include citation data in citations
- that would make conversion easier, I guess.\r\n\r\nAs for the license of a joint
plugin - I think there would be a reluctance among a good part of Zotero's non-staff
contributors against LGPL. But I don't see why Mendeley couldn't use a general
GPL component - actually I think it already does: csl is (I'm pretty sure) released
under GPL, and almost all csl styles under cc by-sa\r\n\r\nI wonder, though -
who would have the incentive to put in the significant work? I don't know much
about Mendeley internals, but Zotero doesn't have a lot of manpower for development
and I don't them making this a priority.\r\n\r\n(just to clarify my status - I'm
just an active Zotero user and volunteer some time on the forum - I don't have
any formal association with or inside knowledge of Zotero)."
- id: 4228
author: Mr. Gunn
author_email: william.gunn@mendeley.com
author_url: http://mendeley.com/profiles/william-gunn/
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content: Well, at the risk of being unhelpful again, let me point out that Mendeley
and Zotero do both use citeproc.js, so that's not an issue, it's just that how
the particular word processor plugins were implemented are different and use different
field codes. It would be great if we could agree on a uniform way to do markup
in word processors, so that Zotero and Mendeley could be used interchangeably
to format citations in a document, but we just aren't there yet. I'll bring this
up for discussion.
- id: 4229
author: Martin Paul Eve
author_email: martin@martineve.com
author_url: ''
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content: ! "Thanks for that response, Mr. Gunn. I didn't find your response unhelpful,
it was utterly courteous throughout and only \"unhelpful\" in the sense that,
for my purposes, it was impractical -- I think Mendeley's approach towards the
community, especially on Twitter, is exemplary.\r\n\r\nThis is another example
of that. Nobody from Zotero (I appreciate that they are a community, albeit funded,
effort, as opposed to a private entity) has initiated that discussion; it is Mendeley
who are taking the lead.\r\n\r\nThat said, I would be extremely happy if all parties
were to work together for a standardized citation field reference. At present,
I am locked-in to Zotero. If this were interchangeable, the reference systems
would be competing based on their actual merits, rather than a captive user-base,
which I think we all agree would be a good thing!"
- id: 4237
author: adam.smith
author_email: karcher@u.northwestern.edu
author_url: ''
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content: ! "\"Nobody from Zotero (I appreciate that they are a community, albeit
funded, effort, as opposed to a private entity) has initiated that discussion;
it is Mendeley who are taking the lead.\"\r\nwell - document conversion has been
discussed by Zotero and on the Zotero forums for quite a while - and (rightly
imho) not limited to Mendeley, but more focused on older software like Endnote,
which presumably has many more locked-in users.\r\n\r\nZotero is also apparently
hiring a new community liasion/evangelist, which should professionalize that part
- I don't know where they are on this, the announcement and call for applications
was about 2 months ago and they sounded very pleased by the applicant pool."
- id: 4251
author: Martin Paul Eve
author_email: martin@martineve.com
author_url: ''
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content: I feel I've been hugely overcritical of Zotero now -- well, perhaps the
community engagement aspect will change in time....
- id: 6029
author: Bruce
author_email: bdarcus@gmail.com
author_url: ''
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content: ! 'I, the creator of the CSL language on which citation support in Mendeley
and Zotero is based, have long been <a href="http://community.muohio.edu/blogs/darcusb/archives/2009/03/01/the-babel-of-citations"
rel="nofollow">talking about this</a>. There is no technical reason at all that
we couldn''t have a single plug-in code-base and API that could interact with
different services: mendeley, zotero, citeulike, etc. But someone needs to write
it.'
- id: 6030
author: Bruce
author_email: bdarcus@gmail.com
author_url: ''
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content: ! "Oh, and to offer some balance to this discussion, Zotero was the first
major CSL implementation, and Mendeley benefited from that groundwork substantially.
For example. the first Mendeley plugin code was pretty much the same open source
code Zotero wrote. It just happens that they inherited some of what I consider
to be the same design mistakes as Zotero ;-).\r\n\r\nSo I'd prefer if the respective
user communities would refrain from the competitive language."
---
<p>One of the best things about Mendeley is that, the second you mention their name on Twitter, a horde of helpful and informative community liaison team members descend upon you. This means that, if you have a query, you can be sure that someone knowledgeable is never far away.</p>
<p>That said, it seems that my current issue -- being able to convert either an OpenOffice or Word <a href="http://www.zotero.org">Zotero</a> document to <a href="http://www.mendeley.com">Mendeley</a> -- is not possible. Having communicated with <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/mrgunn">@mrgunn</a> he suggested two approaches:</p>
<ol>
<li>Save the document without Zotero markup and re-insert the citations</li>
<li>Run the document through a LaTeX converter (untested)</li>
</ol>
<p>As the document in question has over 500 citations, I didn't find this to be of much use (which is not a criticism of <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/mrgunn">@mrgunn</a>, but rather the sad state of interoperability). However, I decided to do a little digging myself to work out what the actual issues are...</p>
<p>Now, in OpenOffice (at least), a Zotero field code looks like this: Reference: ZOTERO_ITEM {"citationItems":[{"locator":"17","uri":["http://zotero.org/users/64077/items/WKMCH3XK"]}]} RND5qVC9BQOk1. Upon visiting the URL in question, it is quite clearly a Zotero catalogue entry. A Mendeley citation, on the other hand, looks like: Reference: Mendeley Citation{f19dafe4-bd54-4b6c-9585-7acfd39428c9} RNDSDLGneoN3n. The task of a converter would be to match these two styles up. </p>
<p>However, it doesn't seem to be that simple. Zotero reference fields can also contain a plethora of other information that Mendeley seemingly doesn't support, the foremost (and to my mind a deal-breaker) being <a href="http://feedback.mendeley.com/forums/4941-mendeley-feedback/suggestions/94437-include-page-numbers-in-the-citation">page numbers</a> (!) This means that any conversion to Mendeley's format would be lossy; it would be impossible to preserve all the data from Zotero citations because Mendeley simply doesn't support including all this information.</p>
<p>While Mendeley seems, from my Twitter conversations, to be winning the hearts and minds of the research community, time and time again I query whether this is because they have a superior product to, say, Zotero or because they are able to market it better owing to the monetarization of their service. Things they win on: pretty interface; social aspect of sharing; online profiles generated automatically are great. Sadly, however, some basic stuff is missing. If they could implement this and then work with Zotero to allow document cross-compatibility (alongside not asking me to enter my email password to garner contacts -- this is incredibly bad practice -- OAuth?), they'd be on to a winner with a superior product.</p>