Citation includes multiple surnames followed by et al.

m.collett

When citing one particular reference the citation contains multiple surnames followed by et al. rather than just one as is specified in the citation style for APA 7th edition and even as shown in the style preview (see image attached).

I have gone through by library and made sure all authors are names consistently.

Advise on resolving this appreciated.
https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u14525060/brr4hgcnni5rr5iezgd4.png

Thanks!

adamsmith

You have multiple citations with Glew as a first author and different co-authors. This is correct APA for that situation.

m.collett

Hey thanks, for other instances of multiple citations with the same authors it creates citations in the form (Author, 2021a), (Author, 2021b) etc

Why isn't it doing it in this example?

Thanks.

adamsmith

Because the citations aren't by the same author (and also wouldn't appear next to each other in the reference list). But in the end, the reason is that it's a rule that APA came up with and Zotero follows.

bwiernik

In APA style, (Author et al., 2021a), (Author et al., 2021b) is only used when the lists of authors for the two items are exactly the same. When there are different second/third/etc authors, APA style calls for additional names to be added instead to disambiguate. The reason for this is to direct readers easily to the correct item in the bibliography because items are sorted alphabetically by the full author list. Zotero is following correct APA style here.

m.collett

That makes sense, thank you!

m.collett

This was a comment from a reviewer, is there a good guide i can reference to show it is correct?

adamsmith

https://www.owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/apa_style/apa_formatting_and_style_guide/in_text_citations_author_authors.html#:~:text=you’re citing multiple works with similar groups of authors,l