Thanks to everyone who responded on and off list about embedding metadata in PDFs. I’m going to create some sample PDFs with a mix of embedded metadata and structured text content in the body of cover pages to see if any of the reference managers will read embedded metadata or can reliably parse structured text from the PDF content. I haven’t found any specific documentation about which metadata elements might be read by the popular reference managers, but I’ll start with Dublin Core and PRISM both of which are supported by the software I plan on using to add metadata - EXIF Tool (https://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/TagNames/XMP.html). So far, from my brief tests and anecdotal reports, embedded metadata is ignored by Mendeley, Zotero, and EndNote. I’ll report back when I have anything of interest.

Regards,
Jason

Jason Best
Director of Biodiversity Informatics
Botanical Research Institute of Texas
1700 University Drive
Fort Worth, Texas 76107

817-332-4441 ext. 230
http://www.brit.org