The Bat Literature Project (BatLit) facilitates discovery of scientific literature on bats (Chiroptera).
\nThis data publication contains versioned Zotero metadata and provenance of the batlit literature (Sherman et al. 2024) records, as tracked by Preston (a biodiversity data tracker, Elliott et al. 2020,2023) using the following workflow:
\nZOTERO_TOKEN=[SECRET]\\\n preston track\\\n --algo md5\\\n https://www.zotero.org/groups/5435545/bat_literature_project\nin which ZOTERO_TOKEN is an API token with sufficient access to Zotero's Bat Literature Project group. Note that, for this publication, the pdf content was not included for copyright reasons. However, secure links (i.e. md5 content hashes) to these PDFs are embedded in the archives. The result is a version corpus of batlit metadata, and their origins, packaged in tar.gz and zip archives.
\nLiterature records can be extracted from this corpus in various ways. As an example, we show a reference list of a recent version of the BatLit Corpus, both of which are provided in included batlit metadata archives (i.e., data.zip, data.tar.gz). For ease of processing, we’ve included a sample of 3 records in the table below, as well as files in tsv/csv formats include 100 records and all records.
\n| filenames | \ndescription | \n
|---|---|
| data.zip / .tar.gz | \nbatlit metadata archive | \n
| prov.nq / bom.nq | \nbatlit metadata bill of material | \n
| refs-100.tsv / .csv | \nauthor/date/title/journal of first 100 records | \n
| refs.tsv / .csv / .ris | \nauthor/date/title/journal of all records | \n
| data-on-zenodo.zip / .tar.gz | \narchive of associations of batlit metadata to Zenodo record ids | \n
| refs-on-zenodo-100.tsv / .csv | \nauthor/date/title/journal/zenodo doi of first 100 records | \n
| refs-on-zenodo.tsv / .csv | \nauthor/date/title/journal/zenodo doi of first 100 records | \n
First 3 records shown below as an example, and was generated by running:
\ncat refs.csv\\\n | head -4\\\n | mlr --icsv --oxtab cat Note that id points to the records as seen on Zotero, attachment points to the attachment records as seen on Zotero, attachmentId is the signature/hash of the associated pdf, corpusId is the signature/hash of the applicable BatLit version (see version table below).
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authors Vora | Hannah | Lieberman | Vale | Plowright | Bernsteindate 2022-05title Want to prevent pandemics? Stop spilloversjournal Naturetype journalArticlevolume 605issue 7910pages 419-422doi 10.1038/d41586-022-01312-yid https://www.zotero.org/groups/bat_literature_project/items/A5RNP5YHattachment https://api.zotero.org/groups/5435545/items/223P42N5attachmentId hash://md5/85c89cedcc23b072f98f3c22ad731029corpusId hash://md5/0157e8ec3f1f8eb877e7b6cd6fde26bc
authors Jonesdate 07/1972title Comparative ecology of three pteropid bats in Rio Muni, West Africajournal Journal of Zoologytype journalArticlevolume 167issue 3pages 353-370doi 10.1111/j.1469-7998.1972.tb03118.xid https://www.zotero.org/groups/bat_literature_project/items/SPESDC4Nattachment https://api.zotero.org/groups/5435545/items/2243VAGUattachmentId hash://md5/ca80010ec55ec5ff7073697e9c696063corpusId hash://md5/0157e8ec3f1f8eb877e7b6cd6fde26bc
authors Otto | Rall | Brosedate 12/2007title Allometric degree distributions facilitate food-web stabilityjournal Naturetype journalArticlevolume 450issue 7173pages 1226-1229doi 10.1038/nature06359id https://www.zotero.org/groups/bat_literature_project/items/6RAB386Yattachment https://api.zotero.org/groups/5435545/items/225DJR2QattachmentId hash://md5/6bdc818006c01cac3dd90eec4b337289corpusId hash://md5/0157e8ec3f1f8eb877e7b6cd6fde26bc
| name | \nversion | \ndate | \n# references | \n# attachments | \nfingerprint | \n
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bat Literature Corpus | \nv0.1 | \n2024-04-26 | \n2929 | \n5055 | \nhash://sha256/6ba…189 | \n
| Bat Literature Corpus | \nv0.2 | \n2024-05-16/2024-05-17 | \n3310 | \n5471 | \nhash://md5/be6…1d7 | \n
| Bat Literature Corpus | \nv0.3 | \n2024-06-25/2024-06-26 | \n5501 | \n7229 | \nhash://md5/350…77d | \n
| Bat Literature Corpus | \nv0.4 | \n2024-08-01/2024-08-02 | \n20146 | \n29860 | \nhash://md5/b39…72a | \n
| Bat Literature Corpus | \nv0.5 | \n2024-08-16/2024-08-17 | \n20145 | \n29850 | \nhash://md5/26f…b20 | \n
| Bat Literature Corpus | \nv0.6 | \n2024-09-19/2024-09-20 | \n19038 | \n22590 | \nhash://md5/db7…97b | \n
| Bat Literature Corpus | \nv0.7 | \n2024-12-05/2024-12-06 | \n19268 | \n22930 | \nhash://md5/ce1…1a3 | \n
| Bat Literature Corpus | \nv0.8 | \n2025-10-02 | \n19252 | \n22947 | \nhash://md5/330…ce0 | \n
| Bat Literature Corpus | \nv0.9 | \n2025-12-19/2025-12-20 | \n21757 | \n25471 | \nhash://md5/1cd…6f5 | \n
| Bat Literature Corpus | \nv0.10 | \n2026-04-17 | \n22901 | \n27054 | \nhash://md5/015…6bc | \n
For more information contact Aja Sherman (aja.sherman22@gmail.com), Cullen Geiselman (cullen@werinterests.com), or Jorrit Poelen (jhpoelen@jhpoelen.nl).
\nCite as: A.C. Sherman, J.H. Poelen, D. Agosti, N. Upham, N.B. Simmons, J.S. Zijlstra, and C.K. Geiselman. 2026. Bat Literature Project (BatLit, https://batlit.org) v0.10 hash://md5/0157e8ec3f1f8eb877e7b6cd6fde26bc
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The Biodiversity Literature Repository (BLR) is to share publications related to bio-systematics. The goal is to provide
\nFor additional search functionality refindit can be used. This includes also searches in CrossRef, DataCite, PubMed, RefBank, GNUB and Mendeley.
\nUpload guideline
\nA provisional guideline how to upload is here.
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", "title": "Biodiversity Literature Repository", "type": { "id": "topic" }, "website": "https://www.biolitrepo.org" }, "revision_id": 15, "slug": "biosyslit", "theme": { "brand": "biosyslit", "enabled": true, "style": { "font": { "family": "Arial, sans-serif", "size": "16px", "weight": 600 }, "mainHeaderBackgroundColor": "#FFFFFF", "primaryColor": "#636363", "primaryTextColor": "#FFFFFF", "secondaryColor": "#7eb13e", "secondaryTextColor": "#FFFFFF", "tertiaryColor": "#7eb13e", "tertiaryTextColor": "#FFFFFF" } }, "updated": "2025-04-07T12:05:37.615917+00:00" }, "revision_id": 8, "slug": "batlit", "updated": "2025-04-07T11:53:19.512443+00:00" }, { "access": { "member_policy": "open", "members_visibility": "public", "record_submission_policy": "open", "review_policy": "open", "visibility": "public" }, "children": { "allow": true }, "created": "2013-11-11T14:14:18+00:00", "custom_fields": {}, "deletion_status": { "is_deleted": false, "status": "P" }, "id": "c529f97d-f8cb-4c13-a439-9e36891694c2", "links": {}, "metadata": { "curation_policy": "
The Biodiversity Literature Repository (BLR) is to share publications related to bio-systematics. The goal is to provide
\nFor additional search functionality refindit can be used. This includes also searches in CrossRef, DataCite, PubMed, RefBank, GNUB and Mendeley.
\nUpload guideline
\nA provisional guideline how to upload is here.
\n\n
\n
\n
\n
", "title": "Biodiversity Literature Repository", "type": { "id": "topic" }, "website": "https://www.biolitrepo.org" }, "revision_id": 15, "slug": "biosyslit", "theme": { "brand": "biosyslit", "enabled": true, "style": { "font": { "family": "Arial, sans-serif", "size": "16px", "weight": 600 }, "mainHeaderBackgroundColor": "#FFFFFF", "primaryColor": "#636363", "primaryTextColor": "#FFFFFF", "secondaryColor": "#7eb13e", "secondaryTextColor": "#FFFFFF", "tertiaryColor": "#7eb13e", "tertiaryTextColor": "#FFFFFF" } }, "updated": "2025-04-07T12:05:37.615917+00:00" } ], "ids": [ "23bc63d8-1a49-4a20-9519-fb3a3e78f2b4", "c529f97d-f8cb-4c13-a439-9e36891694c2" ] }, "id": "14617512", "pids": { "doi": { "client": "datacite", "identifier": "10.5281/zenodo.14617512", "provider": "datacite" } } }, "pids": { "doi": { "client": "datacite", "identifier": "10.5281/zenodo.20287843", "provider": "datacite" }, "oai": { "identifier": "oai:zenodo.org:20287843", "provider": "oai" } }, "revision_id": 4, "stats": { "all_versions": { "data_volume": 77455130977.0, "downloads": 1889, "unique_downloads": 1818, "unique_views": 695, "views": 748 }, "this_version": { "data_volume": 6787870051.0, "downloads": 86, "unique_downloads": 85, "unique_views": 37, "views": 38 } }, "status": "published", "swh": {}, "updated": "2026-05-19T14:27:06.431769+00:00", "versions": { "index": 7, "is_latest": true } }