Export for Zotero

Hi everyone,
I'm working with OpenRefine to deduplicate my records retrieved from 4 databases. When exporting the DOIs/ records after the deduplication, only XLS is possible.... Unfortunately, Zotero does not support Excel Sheets... How can I import the records/DOIs in Zotero? I appreciate the help!

I think converting it into CSV might work, not sure, since there is a delimiter text thing that's why I thought.

Hi @ByndrP

If all your references have DOIs (or ISBNs or PMIDs) then you can export the list of just the DOIs / identifiers as TSV or XLS and then paste into the "Add item by identifier" option in Zotero (adding_items_to_zotero [Zotero Documentation]) - this accepts a list of identifiers not just one at a time. To export just the single column from OpenRefine choose the "Custom tabular" option from the OpenRefine Export menu (documentation at Exporting your work | OpenRefine)

Otherwise Zotero supports a range of import formats, but I'd suggest you look at using either:

  • RIS (a very simple and widely supported format for reference management software)
  • CSL data JSON (slightly more complex and more recent option for bibliographic reference data)

In both these cases the export option you'll want to use from OpenRefine is in the "Export" menu (top right in OpenRefine) and called "Templating". This is the most flexible export option from OpenRefine and really allows you to define the export format as you want. See the documentation at Exporting your work | OpenRefine

As an example of building a RIS export, lets imagine you have a project with columns:

  • Reference type
  • Author
  • Article Title
  • Journal Title
  • Volume
  • Issue number
  • Publication year
  • DOI

Your export template might look like:

The exact details will depend on the data you have to start with and what types of reference you have in your data set.

@Shahmaz0 Thank you, tried that but it did not work unfortunately

@ostephens Thank you, I have tried it with adding multiple DOIs in "Add item by filter"!

It did work for me, however with more then 100 records that might get messy. Within the list of copied identifiers some were missing...

Using the other approach I describe may be the best thing in this case. Please let me know if I can offer further information on this approach