Unabbreviate on import

[jlaehne]

Report ID:
MUF2FD2N-euc

Exporter used:
Better BibTeX

Expected behavior:
No matter whether the journal field contains a full our abbreviated journal name, the journal titles should be written to the .bib file in the same way.

Actual behavior:
If the full journal name is given in the publication field in Zotero (e.g. Applied Physics Letters), the title is correctly abbreviated in bibtex: journal = {Appl. Phys. Lett.}
If the publication field contains an already abbreviated journal name (e.g. Appl. Phys. Lett.), the exported bibtex entry omits the dots: journal = {Appl Phys Lett}
Apparently, the abbreviator throws out the dots in case the journal name is already abbreviated, while it should just keep the entry as is.

I have a mixture of publisher entries in my library, as some are directly imported in Zotero and others were imported from a .bib file with abbreviated journal names. However, in the resulting bibliography, I want them all to appear the same (with dots).

I tried to change the hidden preference autoAbbrevStyle to the American Physics Society instead of Nature style, but that does not change anything.

[retorquere]

The Zotero item in MUF2FD2N-euc has a filled-out Journal Abbreviation field without periods. If a Journal Abbreviation is filled out, that always takes precedence, exactly as-is.

BibTeX doesn't have a separate field for abbreviations, so for bibtex, "use journal abbreviation" means "replace the journal name with the abbreviation". I don't know why people would want this, but some people do.

If you want both the journal title and the abbrev, you will have to export using Better BibLaTeX rather than Better BibTeX.

[retorquere]

The auto abbrev style only works in Juris-M, but in the case of the item you submitted in the log it wouldn't make a difference there either, since the item has a journal abbrev field filled out.

[jlaehne]

Well, in Zotero the journal abbreviation field is actually empty and only the journal field is filled out, see attached screenshot:

If the debug report says the journal abbreviation field is filled out, is that maybe a bug of Zotero?

This is the resulting BibTex file where the dots are gone:

Exported Items.txt

[retorquere]

You're right -- the debug log code had a bug that filled the auto-abbrev into the abbrev field during export, and that's what I was looking at. That's fixed now, but that leaves your problem.

I'm afraid that still comes down to pretty much the previous explanation: you have "Automatic Abbreviation on, which will ask Zotero to provide a journal abbreviation if you did not fill one out yourself. If Zotero provides one, that will be used as if you filled out that field yourself.

Since BibTeX does not have any field for journal abbreviations, "use journal abbreviations" means "replace the journal title with the journal abbreviation, if available". Maybe this should be "replace the journal title with the abbreviation of the user filled one out". That should solve your problem.

I can't do anything about the dots however. I don't generate the abbrevs myself, Zotero contains a citation processing library that it uses to generate its own bibliographies, and I just ask that library to give me an abbreviation. If you generate a bibliography with Zotero, it would show the same abbreviation.

[retorquere]

wait -- something else is going on. When I export that item, I get

@article{ZaremDirectdeterminationambipolar1989,
  title = {Direct Determination of the Ambipolar Diffusion Length in {{GaAs}}/{{AlGaAs}} Heterostructures by Cathodoluminescence},
  author = {Zarem, HA and Sercel, PC and Lebens, JA and Eng, LE and Yariv, A and Vahala, KJ},
  year = {1989},
  volume = {55},
  pages = {1647--1649},
  publisher = {{AIP}},
  doi = {10.1063/1.102226},
  journal = {Appl. Phys. Lett.},
  number = {16}
}

[retorquere]

Can you go into the advanced prefs and clear the cache?

[jlaehne]

Sorry, I was not able to log-in to GH for a while.

I can't find that option?

Though, I did clear translators and reinstalled BBT. With no avail.