Instead of refbase (as I suggested) or a text editor/regular expressions (as Steve used), one could simply use a COinS resolver in their browser.

So dust off your institution’s version of LibX or one of the various other OpenURL extensions/bookmarklets. Then just re-save the resulting page!

This gives a static page that uses the resolver specified in LibX (or whatever) for everyone else. Depending on the method you used to auto-link COinS, the COinS entries will remain too.

refbase was build to allow individual researchers and/or scientific institutions to dynamically publish their bibliographies online, with links to full texts (if available or permitted). In that way, a dedicated refbase instance on your institution’s own server might be what you’re looking for.

Thanks for the tip about refbase. I hadn’t heard of it before. I imported citations into that system but I can’t (yet) figure out how to specify an SFX resolver.

It can also automagically import from a number of formats (including RIS). It also lets you specify an SFX resolver for OpenURL links.

So, it might take the double-checking & manual generation of COinS out of the workflow.

I don’t know exactly why some items get COinS and some don’t, but I do know that in order to get all of the COinS to work initially when I was setting up my bibliography, I had to manually input them one by one in the COinS generator form. I suspect that what you are experiencing might be due to incomplete metadata, but cannot be sure at all.

Anyway, I agree that all of this needs to be simplified further. Not taking away from Zotero’s achievement, nor of COinS, but still.

As you know, I’m now trying to output COinS data from Zotero for use in my weekly reading lists, to add them to the citations of old papers of mine that I’m posting to the web, etc.

But even though it is a “shiny new thing” the process is archaic as all get out. 1) Have to get the citation into Zotero (understandable!) 2) Have to output as a bibliography in HTML. 3) Have to open web page and get as source code (possibly multi-step process). 4) Copy and paste source code for each item into blog source code, or web page. 5) Rinse; repeat.

This is simply insane! And I’m not even attempting the level of local integration that you are. I only want them in and then people with Zotero or an OpenURL resolver will see them.

Without even addressing your issues, although this is a part of the overall process, I need Zotero to just output the code to perhaps the clipboard, or even better to paste it into whatever open application I have at the insertion point.

Once that becomes simple I might have the energy to try and do even more with it.

Question though … have you noticed any sort of specifics as to which items get COinS and which do not? Sometimes books and more often my articles don’t. I think it’s the ones I have entered by hand, but I haven’t actually done a real test to determine for sure. Any observations?