EndNote to Zotero style converter

[stakats]

Does this ticket supersede #686?

[simon]

I think the two are independent. This is for converting EndNote style files to CSLs; #686 is for converting EndNote field codes within Word documents to Zotero field codes.

[stakats]

Got it. Thanks.

[simon]

Since I'm making good progress here, Dan C., any idea what the copyright issues involved here are? As long as Thomson continues to provide all of the styles for free online, we should be okay, but they might decide to pull them if we release a converter. I assume that distributing the converted styles would probably be copyright infringement, but can we legally distribute the original styles from Thomson?

[dcohen]

Replying to simon:
That's great about progress on this front. As the saying goes, IANAL. We might want to consult a lawyer. But my gut is that the styles themselves are not copyrightable--i.e., the abstract expressions of them. Examples, documentation, and code to create them could definitely be copyrightable, as is the Chicago Manual of Style. So what does Thomson really provide? What's in the Endnote styles file? And who wrote it/them?

[simon]

There are ​supposedly 3000 EndNote styles, although, since multiple journals from the same publisher often use the same file, many of these are probably duplicates. For now, Thomson provides each individually, as well as a zip of all of them, on their website. They are in a proprietary binary file format, but, having decoded the basic structure, the fundamentals are implemented similarly to CSL (although CSL is much more powerful).

The ownership of the files is unclear. There is no license agreement included with the styles, even the 6 MB zip file. Some were undoubtedly created by Thomson, but many were probably contributed by users.

After some quick research, I don't think that we'll be able to distribute the Thomson zip file. Mirroring Thomson's archive would probably not fall under the DMCA safe harbor provision for caching, and, in any case, it would only take one DMCA request from Thomson to force us to take it down. Regardless, it's likely that Thomson's repository will remain available in the near future, since the styles are as valuable to EndNote users as to Zotero users.

[dcohen]

Replying to simon:
OK, thanks for the further clarifications. I think we definitely don't want to be distributing the Thomson file, even if part (much) of it is contributed by Endnote users. But don't we just need the file once to serve as a kind of initial reference model (and conversion base) for our own (non-infringing) CSLs (which would probably need tweaking anyway, esp. in the long run)? Do we need users to be pinging/using the Thomson file directly? Perhaps I'm missing some sense of how you envision this working. My initial sense was just to get a jump start on our CSL library, from which users would download (as they do now at zotero.org/styles using the dev build).

[simon]

Replying to dcohen:
I don't think that simply running a converter on the Thomson files will produce an original work, but this is probably something you'd have to talk to a lawyer about. However, as long as the EndNote styles are publicly available somewhere, be it on Thomson's site or the journal's, users can simply drop them into Zotero, and they will work. Furthermore, users migrating from EndNote don't have to worry about the still limited selection of hand-written CSL styles; they can merely use the EndNote styles.

[dcohen]

Replying to simon:
OK, now I understand how this will work. This code will simply use the EndNote styles, i.e., like a razor that's able to use another brand's blades. That seems fine to me (indeed, very clever), but I'll still check with a lawyer after the holidays about all of the options, and I still think (I assume as we all do) that in the long run we need our own CSL library. It will be important to emphasize this to users and developers--i.e., that this is a stop-gap measure (albeit one that will be stopping probably a multi-year gap). Anyway, this is obviously a brilliant piece of work on your part, and will be much appreciated.