JabRef version

5.12 (latest release)

Operating system

Windows

Details on version and operating system

Windows 11 (current)

Checked with the latest development build (copy version output from About dialog)

• I made a backup of my libraries before testing the latest development version.
• I have tested the latest development version and the problem persists

Steps to reproduce the behaviour

One-sentence summary of the issue:

JabRef Export to MS Office 2007 (*.xml) of BibTeX records of type @Electronic and @Online mistakenly duplicates the content of the Title field to the MS Office Publicationtitle field in the exported XML file: it should not do that (this issue does not exist for other types, e.g., @Book)

Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. In JabRef, allocate a new library and copy-paste this minimal BibTeX record:

@Electronic{Author,
author = {Some Author},
title = {The Title},
url = {https://somewhere.net/example/address},
urldate = {2024-01-19},
}

2. File -> Export this record as type MS Office 2007 (*.xml) into a file test.xml

3. The exported file "test.xml" mistakenly contains both, a "Title" and a "Publicationtitle" field (highlighted in bolditalic in the following file dump):

<b:Sources xmlns:b="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/officeDocument/2006/bibliography"&nbsp;xmlns="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/officeDocument/2006/bibliography"&nbsp;SelectedStyle="">
    <b:Source>
        <b:BIBTEX_Entry>electronic</b:BIBTEX_Entry>
        <b:SourceType>ElectronicSource</b:SourceType>
        <b:Title>The Title</b:Title>
        <b:Tag>Author</b:Tag>
        <b:URL>https://somewhere.net/example/address</b:URL>
        <b:YearAccessed>2024</b:YearAccessed>
        <b:MonthAccessed>January</b:MonthAccessed>
        <b:DayAccessed>19</b:DayAccessed>
        <b:Author>
            <b:Author>
                <b:NameList>
                    <b:Person>
                        <b:Last>Author</b:Last>
                        <b:First>Some</b:First>
                    </b:Person>
                </b:NameList>
            </b:Author>
        </b:Author>
        <b:PublicationTitle>The Title</b:PublicationTitle>
    </b:Source>
</b:Sources>

To illustrate the follow-up consequences of the bug in MS Word:

4. Open a blank MS Word document

5. Load the file "test.xml" via:

   1. References -> Manage Sources -> Browse… and then
   2. select and Copy -> the loaded record from the Sources available in test pane into the Current List pane and
   3. Close the "Source Manager" dialog window
   (the duplicate title is already displayed in the Preview pane of the dialog window)

6. Insert a bibliography into the empty document, via:

   1. References -> Bibliography
   2. Select the first style, Bibliography, offered in the pop-up menu

7. The inserted bibliography consists of the following record:
   Author, S. (n.d.). The Title. The Title. Retrieved January 19, 2024, from https://somewhere.net/example/address
    
   Note the duplicate title.

As mentioned at the beginning, the same issue exists for records of type @Online, but not for e.g., type @Book.

Appendix

Related Source Code:

File src/main/java/org/jabref/logic/msbib/MSBibConverter.java:

   108	        // TODO: currently only Misc can happen
   109	        if ("ElectronicSource".equals(msBibType) || "Art".equals(msBibType) || "Misc".equals(msBibType)) {
   110	            result.publicationTitle = entry.getFieldLatexFree(StandardField.TITLE).orElse(null);
   111	        }

(addendum 2024-01-20):
In the meantime I verified that removing the first clause "ElectronicSource".equals(msBibType) indeed suffices to correct the behavior (kudos to the maintainers of https://devdocs.jabref.org/ ).
I have not investigated the mapping of BibTeX @misc to MS Office Misc mentioned in https://docs.jabref.org/advanced/knowledge/msofficebibfieldmapping (visited 2024-01-20)).

So, the patched lines just read
(File src/main/java/org/jabref/logic/msbib/MSBibConverter.java, lines 108ff.):

  // TODO: currently only Misc can happen
  // 2024-01-20 balanco@github: removed condition/case "ElectronicSource".equals(msBibType)
  //    that generated MS Office bibliographic records with
  //    _duplicate_ "Title" and "Publicationtitle" fields.
  if ("Art".equals(msBibType) || "Misc".equals(msBibType)) {
     result.publicationTitle = entry.getFieldLatexFree(StandardField.TITLE).orElse(null);
  }

<EOT>