"Standard" Citation Template Does Not Have "ISBN" Field

niconicon1

The "Standard" Citation Template in Zotero has no "ISBN" field (although there's a DOI field). This is a major problem for accessibility for standards only indexed by ISBN. Please add an "ISBN" field to the "Standard" Templates.

adamsmith

Could you give an example of a standard with an ISBN? (also, what do you mean by accessibility here?)

niconicon1

All IEC standards (over 10000+ internationally) have ISBNs, which basically cover everything in the world that uses electricity - including the USB port and CD drives on a computer, the power outlet on the wall, the mains voltage of the grid, ...

For some random examples:

* IEC 60038:2009 - nominal voltage of electrical supply systems
- 9782889100248
- https://webstore.iec.ch/en/publication/153

* IEC 60320-1:2021 - sets the general requirements for appliance couplers for two poles and two poles with earth contact
- 9782832240472
- https://webstore.iec.ch/en/publication/64901

* IEC 62680-3-1:2017: Universal Serial Bus interfaces for data and power - Part 3-1: USB 3.1 Specification (USB is an industry standard but IEC passed it with the same text to give it international status)
- 9782832253519
- https://webstore.iec.ch/en/publication/29943

* IEC 61077:1991 - Compact VHS video cassette
- 2831821231
- https://webstore.iec.ch/en/publication/4460

* IEC 60825-1:2014: safety of laser products emitting laser radiation in the wavelength range 180 nm to 1 mm.
- 9782832214992
- https://webstore.iec.ch/en/publication/3587

* IEC 60951-1:2022 - Nuclear facilities - Instrumentation systems important to safety - Radiation monitoring for accident and post-accident conditions
- 9782832259603
- https://webstore.iec.ch/en/publication/65041

adamsmith

Thanks, that's helpful. The second question remains, though -- while it'd be good to catalogue the ISBN (you can do this now using ISBN: 9782889100248 in Extra) but beyond that I'm unclear of how this is a 'major problem': even with an ISBN field, Zotero wouldn't be able to get metadata via ISBN since that's not catalogued anywhere online.

niconicon1

Without an ISBN field, future readers will have no idea if they're getting the correct revision of the standard or not due to the lack of an unique identifier. IEC doesn't seems to provide any permanent URLs for their standards, only a purchase page at https://webstore.iec.ch. It's reasonable to assume that these links will become inaccessible a decade later. Using the publication year is error prone because the same standards have many different published variants depending on whether amendments are added into the original text or not. This ambiguity is best to be removed by attaching a "hard" identifier, which the IEC provides.

> (you can do this now using ISBN: 9782889100248 in Extra)

The "Extra" field is not included in many bibliography templates, this is not an acceptable solution. One shouldn't be forced to hack the default bibliography templates to do a common task.

adamsmith

The Extra syntax treats the ISBN the same way as it would a.dedicated ISBN field, so for citation purposes it's equivalent

adamsmith

And IEC 62680-3-1:2017 is a unique identifier. It's no less unique or standardized than an ISBN and because other standards (like ISO) have similar IDs, they are typically used in citations. If you look, e.g., at the IEEE citation guidelines for standards, they don't include the ISBN

damnation

If you mean citation styles with "bibliography templates" then let us know if you spot one where it should be added, given that the citation guidelines are clear on this and show that they'd want an ISBN.