Lars Willighagen

::: {.stackedit__html}
In the [last
post](https://larsgw.blogspot.com/2019/07/citationjs-ris-rework-pt-1.html)
I explained how I started implementing the RIS specification that I
found in the Internet Archive, only to discover that there is an older
specification, which seems to be more common at times.

Now, I have implemented the old spec, which luckily was not nearly as
complex. One thing that came to my attention was that there were a lot
of redundant tags: for title, there are `TI`, `T1`, `CT` and usually
`BT`; for journal names there's `JO` & `JF`, and `JA`, `J1`, & `J2` for
abbreviated journal names. While I can imagine some nuanced difference
in meaning between those tags, those meanings are not documented, and
not trivial to figure out either. Anyway, that is not a problem for the
implementation.

I also updated the implementation of the new spec, to fix some mistakes
and add some more mappings. In addition, because in real life there seem
to be some implementations that export a mix of the two specifications,
I created an implementation based on the new spec, that if needed can
defer to the old one --- and some random properties that Wikipedia and
Zotero have picked up somewhere, and are not in either spec.

How do the results look? First of all, the example that was giving me
issues in the last post looks a lot nicer now:

``` language-js
{ issue: '1',
  page: '230-265',
  type: 'article-journal',
  volume: '47',
  title: 'On computable numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem',
  author: [ { family: 'Turing', given: 'Alan Mathison' } ],
  issued: { 'date-parts': [ [ 1937 ] ] },
  'container-title': 'Proc. of London Mathematical Society' }
```

The only thing that was missing when I first tried this out was the end
of the page range, because `SP` in the new spec is the entire page
range, while in the old spec you need both `SP` and `EP`. I had to fix
that manually --- not a problem, just something to keep in mind when
re-running the scripts.

One other thing to check was how to the mappings look from above,
without all the type-specific shenanigans. I keep [a (public)
spreadsheet](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13BQg5lg29VkRb4appz-eh1jcQsfI-0rdCTdmvpg577M/edit?usp=sharing)
with mappings from CSL-JSON to all kinds of different formats, so I
added the RIS mappings. So, a sanity check. Does it make sense?

![RIS
mappings](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/pLaxqMz1kLcYzrmgdrC7ebI_gDqV1kZ6fqUaoD7v162T8r8_pI_sr_UjNN7RKwOdmpiRMBjVz0e9GYQex0rF2xgjESJgDIPZqHJuY4oCTUEkvgbENGJuZyYLmyAGUhnjnTU5vEqqhW-f7KigYudnMUGg1wqbotNQE44B2TKBBwldOgXqj52fdmzKTwAvO2UTZNVUoyNbQBmFFfncdbCOiehC2Zb4sKS3c2YJ0cyHu6zhMkrgO4dFk7OGcnUWM2samSg_oRIsS01B1Y3ylzdZmLGqZfLILA1K6Yy3SMrdVZ4PLi4IJN4WVcwPkBgndErOeuFNau0XoZK54oASSuvD6hE3rI7MTsPrckhIEaNdDq5r9_QE_VsZ_pxEV-ekVdJzsGReOgh3u0oF5Y0jQsDtE-Y_OLxxqFm4Q6zrQnpsX1caZ2TZDloU-714Z0Yi0V4xl8nskweRLW52V0THrYzbvV_l_YQJV8koNl-6j55h_Lg7ocYS85-MLiunZ-mhsKBXBvQAmRix1GjOi8FkRK_kwDk0liYjen7CRHzgPGipqIewphZy3aSGOW5A9YyAcMgfPeD_HemPTPABKoKybsB45ACkfb3gSUqgsPIpO3hf4sRuRJ1N2nswlwxxxACpUiKtVH7Xq3c3U5HG-P2o0OlbUBUB92FnKoew1Gm7QT4RxT3Qg4KyHodrPMXrwnyoi550dBMNt7oIkWznrbsjlxDeompttA=w844-h469-no "RIS mappings")

*No*, not at all! The RIS tag `SE` is mapped to 10 different CSL
variables, and the CSL `number` variables is mapped to 9 different RIS
tags. To me, it does not make any sense, even accounting for the fact
that I know there is some variation between entry types.

The question that remains is, does it work? Even if it does not look
like it makes sense, the output could still make sense, if other
implementations follow the specification to a similar degree. I know
Zotero does not entirely follow it --- all the spec anomalies that *are*
implemented are attributed to weird EndNote quirks, not the weird *spec*
quirks.

That made me wonder to what degree the EndNote implementation follows
the specification. However, I do not have EndNote, so this is a call to
action! Can you help me with clearing up the RIS cloud for me by
submitting your RIS exports to [a CC0-licensed
repo](https://github.com/citation-js/ris-examples/tree/master/EndNote)?
Preferably with all kinds of reference types --- articles, books,
chapters, conference papers, webpages, software, patents, bills, maps,
artworks, whatever you can find. For legal reasons, please replace
abstracts and other copyrightable content by `[... omitted]`.

In the meantime, I will be collecting RIS exports from other sources,
like Zotero and Mendeley and websites like Google Scholar, BMC and
PubMed Central. If you know of any other sources, please let me know!
:::


In the last post I explained how I started implementing the RIS specification that I found in the Internet Archive, only to discover that there is an older specification, which seems to be more common at times. Now, I have implemented the old spec, which luckily was not nearly as complex.

Citation.js: RIS Rework Pt. 2

::: {.stackedit__html}
So a while ago I was looking around for the RIS specification again. I
had not found it earlier, only a reference implementation from Zotero, a
surprisingly complete list of tags and types on Wikipedia and some
examples from various websites and programs exporting RIS files. They
did not seem to go together well, however. There were some slight
differences in tags here and there, and a bunch of useful tags listed by
Wikipedia were labelled "degenerate" in the Zotero codebase, and only
used for imports --- implying some sort of problem.

What could be going on? Well, I checked out the references on the
Wikipedia page again, to see if there really was no official
specification or some other more reliable source where it got its
information from. And, suddenly, there *was* an actual source this time.
I do not know how I missed it earlier, but there was a page
([archived](https://web.archive.org/web/20120526103719/http://refman.com/support/risformat_intro.asp))
that linked to a zip file containing a PDF file with general
specifications and an Excel file with sheets with property lists for all
different types.

That sounded useful, so I spent *waaayy* to much time automating [a
script](https://github.com/citation-js/ris-mappings) to turn those
sheets --- with a bunch of user input --- into usable mappings for
Citation.js. I just finished that today, apart from some... questionable
mappings, but I wanted to at least test the final script with an
example. As for the results, well, see for yourself. [The
example](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIS_(file_format)#Example_multi-record_format),
from the Wikipedia page (CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported) was

    TY  - JOUR
    T1  - On computable numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem
    A1  - Turing, Alan Mathison
    JO  - Proc. of London Mathematical Society
    VL  - 47
    IS  - 1
    SP  - 230
    EP  - 265
    Y1  - 1937
    ER  -

and my results were

``` language-js
{ issue: 1, page: 230, type: 'article-journal', volume: 47 }
```

That looked really weird and disappointing. Again, what could possibly
be going on here? The example on Wikipedia is using `T1`, `A1`, `JO` and
`Y1` while the specs say to use `TI`, `AU`, `T2` and `PY` here. Where
are these differences coming from?

After some digging around on Wikipedia I found [a
comment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:RIS_(file_format)#Versions_of_the_specification)
saying that there are in fact two specifications: one from 2011 and one
from before. The archived spec I checked out was from 2012 (as linked by
Wikipedia!), while they use the version from before 2011; which luckily
is [still
available](https://web.archive.org/web/20110930172154/http://www.refman.com/support/risformat_intro.asp).
To be continued.
:::


So a while ago I was looking around for the RIS specification again. I had not found it earlier, only a reference implementation from Zotero, a surprisingly complete list of tags and types on Wikipedia and some examples from various websites and programs exporting RIS files. They did not seem to go together well, however.

Postagens de Rogue Scholar

Citation.js: RIS Rework Pt. 2

Citation.js: RIS Rework Pt. 1