I need to manually edit a bunch of citations, also including the DOIs. Now when I copy the DOI from the publisher’s website and paste it in the DOI-slot in the manual-edit mode of a citation, it also pastes the css style of the text from the publishers site, resulting in an error. So I need to paste the DOI into a text editor, copy it again, and then paste it into paperpile. That can be circumvented by taking the DOI from the website’s address of the paper in many cases, but is still a bit annoying.
Thanks for reporting, @Finn_L. The DOI field in the metadata edit dialog must start with ‘10.’ followed by 4 or 5 digits. I can‘t reproduce this issue with copying; to help us investigate, could you share a few examples of publisher websites where this happens?
If you have citations that are missing DOIs, you can try updating the reference details automatically, which will auto-complete missing DOIs and other missing details. You can do this directly from the metadata edit dialog or from the reference list view in your library. See our help page for more information: Update metadata automatically | Paperpile Help Center
Hi @suzanne , thank you for your answer.
Yes, I know all these. I actually updated all references using the auto-update feature before. Unfortunately, there were still missing DOIs and abstracts in some of them. Since I did not want solve this manually, I tried to automate this by writing an R script that fetches the information from crossref but that did not add anything, so I guess paperpile also uses crossref in the background and the missing info is on them? For abstracts, google scholar actually has a bunch of abstracts, so maybe a lookup for abstracts there would also be a helpful feature for paperpile.
Anyway, I am happy to provide more information. Just to reiterate: I go to a publishers website (in Firefox) and copy the DOI from the page (copying from the page’s url directly works fine, but not all publishers’ URL’s are structured like this). Usually, the DOI is formatted as URL, but I only copy the part starting with “10”. Pasting that into the DOI field then leads to excess text which looks like css. I can copy the DOI without problem anywhere else in paperpile: In the abstract field, in the ISSN field, as an identifier for a new source after hitting “Add” - it is just the DOI field that makes trouble. Below you find a couple examples: The url of the publication/publisher, what I copied, what the result in the DOI field was:
Example 1:
URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7312/sidm19358
Part I copied on the webpage: 10.7312/sidm19358
Output in the DOI field:
<html><body><!--StartFragment--><table id="rsGridData" class="dataTable no-footer manualSize" cellspacing="0" role="grid" aria-describedby="rsGridData_info" style="table-layout: fixed; width: 830.996px; margin: 0px 0px 36px; clear: both; border-collapse: separate; border-spacing: 0px; box-sizing: content-box; display: block; border-bottom: none; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "DejaVu Sans", "Lucida Grande", "Segoe UI", Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; position: absolute; top: 0px; left: 0px;"><tbody><tr data-row="90" role="row" class="odd" style="background: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.5); height: 23px;"><td style="box-sizing: content-box; padding: 4px 5px; white-space: nowrap; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(214, 218, 220); border-right: 1px solid rgb(214, 218, 220); font-size: 11px; background: none; border-top-color: rgb(214, 218, 220); border-left-color: rgb(214, 218, 220);"><div class="textCell largeCell" title="Pork barrel politics: How government spending determines elections in a polarized era" style="white-space: nowrap; overflow: hidden; text-overflow: ellipsis; position: relative; max-width: 100%;">Pork barrel politics: How government spending determines elections in a polarized era</div></td></tr><tr data-row="91" role="row" class="even" style="background: none; height: 23px;"><td class="first-child sorting sorting_1" style="font-size: 11px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background: none rgb(244, 248, 249); font-weight: bold; text-align: right; box-sizing: content-box; padding: 4px 5px; white-space: nowrap; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(214, 218, 220); border-right: 1px solid rgb(214, 218, 220); border-top-color: rgb(214, 218, 220); border-left-color: rgb(214, 218, 220);"></tbody></table><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><!--EndFragment--></body></html>
Example 2:
https://www.nber.org/papers/w18116
10.3386/w18116
<html><body><!--StartFragment-->10.3386/w18116 <!--EndFragment--></body></html>
Example 3:
https://academic.oup.com/rev/article-abstract/32/1/86/6780169?redirectedFrom=fulltext
10.1093/reseval/rvac022
<html><body><!--StartFragment--><table id="rsGridData" class="dataTable no-footer manualSize" cellspacing="0" role="grid" aria-describedby="rsGridData_info" style="table-layout: fixed; width: 830.996px; margin: 0px 0px 36px; clear: both; border-collapse: separate; border-spacing: 0px; box-sizing: content-box; display: block; border-bottom: none; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "DejaVu Sans", "Lucida Grande", "Segoe UI", Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; position: absolute; top: 0px; left: 0px;"><tbody><tr data-row="97" role="row" class="even" style="background: none; height: 23px;"><td style="box-sizing: content-box; padding: 4px 5px; white-space: nowrap; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(214, 218, 220); border-right: 1px solid rgb(214, 218, 220); font-size: 11px; background: none; border-top-color: rgb(214, 218, 220); border-left-color: rgb(214, 218, 220);"><div class="textCell largeCell" title="Peer review in funding-by-lottery: A systematic overview and expansion" style="white-space: nowrap; overflow: hidden; text-overflow: ellipsis; position: relative; max-width: 100%;">Peer review in funding-by-lottery: A systematic overview and expansion</div></td></tr></tbody></table><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><!--EndFragment--></body></html>
Thanks for following up here, @Finn_L. What you’re seeing is actually a Firefox-specific issue with how the browser copies text.
When you copy anything from a webpage, your browser puts two versions into your clipboard: plain text and rich text (HTML). The app you paste into then decides which version to use. Firefox is known for being more aggressive about preserving the HTML version, which is why you’re seeing raw tags instead of clean text.
Here are a few suggestions to try:
- Use Paste without formatting (
Cmd+Shift+Option+Von macOS,Ctrl+Shift+Von Windows/Linux) - Right-click > Copy (on some pages this strips formatting)
You can also try copying from a different browser (Chrome and Safari tend to include less HTML when copying).
Hi @suzanne,
Pasting without formatting, right-click → copy, and copying from a different browser all led to the same issue. However, opening paperpile in Chrome, then pasting it there works, regardless of where I copied the DOI from (Firefox or Chrome).
To me that looks like a paperpile-for-firefox-issue, not a browser-copying issue. Again, the pasting also works fine in all other fields in paperpile except for the DOI field. That also seems to hint at a specific problem within paperpile, not how the text got copied.