- Incorrect URL for books. Auto-updating of many book records often imports broken links to Google Play. An alternative/more reliable URL database needs to be used for ISBNs.
- Pasting ISBNs is overly complicated. When pasting an ISBN all spaces and dashes should automatically be stripped for searching. For example, 978 1234 -5678 910 should automatically become 97812345678910
- Author name handling. (last, first) autocorrect was more reliable in the standard version of the app.
- DOI and ISBN status. It should be easy to tell whether a record has a DOI or ISBN input which can later be used to update the record. Presently this is difficult.
- DOI and ISBN export. Exporting the ISBNs and DOIs of records is important since many libraries and databases allow pasting a batch in for search purposes.
Thank you for sharing these suggestions, @ajn. Can you share examples of the books that were completed incorrectly so that the team can reproduce and correct the issues?
Author-name handling should be improved in a future release of the web app, when updates to Edit dialog will be implemented.
I’ve recorded your UX request for making pasting of ISBNs easier in the paste references for consideration by the team.
Regarding point 4, would you like to be able to filter references by Has ISBN/DOI and No ISBN/DOI and have those as options in the filter menu? Let me know so that I can record it as a feature request.
For point 5, I’m not sure what you mean by DOI and ISBN export. Do you mean including those as separate export options or including those fields in BibTeX and RIS export? It is possible to include the DOI and ISBN fields in the fields exported to BibTeX under Settings > LaTeX and BibTeX and DOIs and ISBNs are already exported to RIS. Let me know.
Hi Suzanne,
Many thanks for the prompt and thoughtful replies.
Shall do via internal support chat.
noted. many thanks.
Correct. This kind of filtering would prove to be advantageous in determining whether a record is missing such a vital identifier.
Speaking of which, handling of missing information can be a tad glitchy at times in the Beta. I may be missing the functionality that is there, but filtering for the category of missing information can be tremendously useful when selecting papers for bulk editing. For example, it’s hard to tell if the missing information is Publisher or Institution in some instances. Selecting 20 papers with only one of these categories of data missing makes for efficient editing.
RIS is great for applications like Paperpile, Endnote, etc - but my university library, as an example, lets me paste multiple ISBNs (but does not allow me to paste RIS, etc) for search. One can use a scripting tool to extract ISBNs from RIS, etc, but a simple Paperpile export of ISBN only or ISBN plus title would be useful. PS Please accept my apologies if the Bibtex export already does this well and I’m misunderstanding how to configure it correctly for this purpose.
When you say “handling of missing information can be a tad glitchy” what do you mean exactly? Can you recall what you were trying to do when you experienced an error so that the team can reproduce?
Or do you mean that when you try to click on book publisher names in the new Paperpile, you can’t access the filter (list of references published by that publisher in your library)? This is a bug and it will be fixed in a future release.
For ISBN export, it sounds like you would like to select references and export their ISBNs as a text document? A workaround that might work in a pinch is to export the references to CSV and get the ISBNs from there.
I’ve now passed this information on to your support team via internal chat. In short, with the Beta, it is hard to tell what has been updated for a record. For example, sometimes key info is missed from DOI updates - like importing abstracts. Other times the DOI doesn’t resolve correctly at all/neither does the DOI URL.
For these failed resolutions/URLs, the matter of checking URL input for dead links surfaces as a paramount consideration. That is, there should be periodic checks done of all URLs in one’s database to check they are working and not generating a 404 error or whatnot. Similarly, when one clicks “auto-update”, a manual check of URLs should be done (and subsequently a report or notification generated).
I had a feeling it was a Bug. Noted.
I presently do a CSV export and clean up whatever is exported to collect the ISBNs. To reiterate, the aim here has more to do with the desire to work with websites that can do batch ISBN searches as opposed to exports for academic referencing.
Lastly, on a separate note, I know that this has been mentioned elsewhere, but a public API that you could approve developers to work with at your discretion, would open a lot of possibilities. That is, I suspect a number of the enhancements that I’ve seen proposed in this forum could be dealt with as paid add-ons. Happy to discuss some ideas/fully worked solutions on that front if the team is open to it. All you need do is send me a PM via your support chat/Intercom.