Upgrade StorageMLA - not showing online database source in bibliography
If you get an article from an online database / subscription service (e.g. JSTOR), MLA style calls for you to include that database in the entries on the Works Cited page (see link and excerpt from Purdue OWL below).
This is not working for me. I grab the info from JSTOR or EBSCO but it does not include the database when inserting the bibliography in Word.
Questions:
1. Does this work for others?
2. What should I check to try and get this working?
Thanks.
-John
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(from http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/08 )
An Article from an Online Database (or Other Electronic Subscription Service)
Cite articles from online databases (e.g. LexisNexis, ProQuest, JSTOR, ScienceDirect) and other subscription services just as you would print sources. Since these articles usually come from periodicals, be sure to consult the appropriate sections of the Works Cited: Periodicals page, which you can access via its link at the bottom of this page. In addition to this information, provide the title of the database italicized, the medium of publication, and the date of access.
Note: Previous editions of the MLA Style Manual required information about the subscribing institution (name and location). This information is no longer required by MLA.
Junge, Wolfgang, and Nathan Nelson. “Nature's Rotary Electromotors.” Science 29 Apr. 2005: 642-44. Science Online. Web. 5 Mar. 2009.
Langhamer, Claire. “Love and Courtship in Mid-Twentieth-Century England.” Historical Journal 50.1 (2007): 173-96. ProQuest. Web. 27 May 2009.
This is not working for me. I grab the info from JSTOR or EBSCO but it does not include the database when inserting the bibliography in Word.
Questions:
1. Does this work for others?
2. What should I check to try and get this working?
Thanks.
-John
******************************
(from http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/08 )
An Article from an Online Database (or Other Electronic Subscription Service)
Cite articles from online databases (e.g. LexisNexis, ProQuest, JSTOR, ScienceDirect) and other subscription services just as you would print sources. Since these articles usually come from periodicals, be sure to consult the appropriate sections of the Works Cited: Periodicals page, which you can access via its link at the bottom of this page. In addition to this information, provide the title of the database italicized, the medium of publication, and the date of access.
Note: Previous editions of the MLA Style Manual required information about the subscribing institution (name and location). This information is no longer required by MLA.
Junge, Wolfgang, and Nathan Nelson. “Nature's Rotary Electromotors.” Science 29 Apr. 2005: 642-44. Science Online. Web. 5 Mar. 2009.
Langhamer, Claire. “Love and Courtship in Mid-Twentieth-Century England.” Historical Journal 50.1 (2007): 173-96. ProQuest. Web. 27 May 2009.
Plus, of course, we would need to change all the translators.
The problem is that, of course, you wouldn't want the library catalogue printed for print books*
I don't think that's a problem - in MLA I'd first test whether something is an online source - i.e. does it have a URL - and only then print the "catalogue" variable. But we'd want to make sure.
We'd also want to see if this is a requirement only for MLA - in which case it might be debatable if it's worth making a change just for that - but my sense is that it's increasingly common for style to want the database an article was taken from cited.
* though some people have actually expressed interest in being able to put that into citation styles they use for private literature lists, so that'd be another plus of the variable.
ex. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 25 Mar. 2011.
Is there a way to automatically populate the information from Gale to those fields in Zotera?
FWIW, I consider this MLA requirement archaic (MLA: it makes no difference where I get a copy of an article, and I certainly don't expect my students to include this information), and surely to go away at some point. So my suggestion on solutions would be based on that perspective.
I'm not really sure that archive works for this, but it might.
This seems to me to indicate we should map catalogue to csl instead.
And if that solution is something other than CSL "archive", then we should explain why.
Magazine in Online Database
Author of article. "Title of article." Title of the magazine. Date. Database title. Name of Database provider. Date Accessed. <URL>.
Health Canada. "Sugar Substitutes." Health Canada. February 18, 2012. Artificial Sweeteners. Jan 25, 2012.
<http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/fn-an/securit/addit/sweeten-edulcor/index-eng.php>.
Source: http://www.workscitedformat.com
Also, here are 2 important points to note:
MLA does not need underlining. Titles, like periodical and book titles, are currently italicized and not underlined like before.
In citations, URLs are no longer in need.
MLA currently recommends writers to use only web addresses if the audience source is unlikely to be unavailable due to the URLs changeable nature.
As for the database citation requirements - we're aware of them, just not very enthusiastic about how and whether to include them in Zotero.
I wouldn't mind if it was called 'catalog' or 'database' as long as I had access to the data.
https://github.com/ajlyon/zotero-bits/issues/8
At the University of East London we use a referencing system based on Harvard but with the need to add the name of the journal collections to our reference lists.
Myself and several of my peers have been using a custom style which I developed for the last couple of years in anticipation of this change being made but it seems as though there are no plans for this to occur.
@adamsmith
"As for the database citation requirements - we're aware of them, just not very enthusiastic about how and whether to include them in Zotero."
Hi, if you don't mind me asking, why not?
I also have a strong suspicion that most people lie about this, because there is no discernible difference and they don't want to deal with that requirement. I flipped through a recent volume of PMLA (the MLA's flagship journal) and I found one citation to a journal article from JSTOR, the rest of the articles were all "Print". Of course, it could be that MLA scholars are just _really_ retro and love spending their time over old bound volumes of journals in the library even though they're on JSTOR/EBSCO - but I'm not buying that.
Sorry, I didnt mean to upset you.
The requirement is not there because Zotero users like myself feel it is necessary, it is there because the educational institution where we study demands it when assessing our work (last semester i was marked down for not including Library Catalog data in my reference list).
http://www.uel.ac.uk/lls/support/harvard/
I am not lying about this. I and many thousands of students have to use the system advocated in the book Cite Them Right, in fact on Page 22 of the book it states;
"The great majority of electronic journals/newspapers available through library web pages are part of journal collections, for example Academic Search Complete, Ingentaconnect, JSTOR, Nexis UK, Proquestr, ScienceDirect. You should refer to the fact that you obtained the title online, because online versions sometimes omit sections found in the printed version, such as advertisements and letters from readers."
It then states for citations add 'Name of collection (Italics)' for journals.
As a result many of the students here use Endnote which is preinstalled on our systems, but I much prefer and advocate use of Zotero however haemorrhage supporters because of issues like this.
I'm also not claiming you (or anyone else) is lying about the existence of said requirements - obviously you're not - I'm arguing that the requirements are so moronic that scholars forced to use them are lying about where they obtain copies of journal articles. And I don't blame them.
It's very unfortunate that UK academia (and it does seem that the use of Cite it Right is very widespread) has latched on to style requirements that don't correspond to the practice in any major journal in any discipline. And I find it bizarre that faculty goes along with that.
Thanks for clearing that up :)
I agree with your comments. It is a moronic policy and probably influenced more by some economic decision to log use of databases than any true academic purpose.
When my work was marked down because of this I was incensed but there was nothing I could do and now unless I include the DOI I have to enter the library catalog details manually which kind of defeats the object of using Zotero and writing a custom style. :(
There are also situations in which this _does_ make sense - see e.g. Frank's point about legal citations above.
It is to combat what L.J. Morrisey has called "hollow references" -- citing references that the author of the manuscript has not read. That is, they read some other paper that cited what seemed to be an interesting article and used the citation from the reference list as though they had actually read it. Morrisey and other researchers (M.V. Simkin and V.P. Roychowdhury) have done several studies and report that this is common -- particularly among students. They looked at papers that were cited incorrectly (wrong author order, wrong journal, wrong year, wrong page range, etc.) and found that the erroneous citations increased as the paper was cited year after year. The errors were not in bibliographic databases listing the original article. The errors were not such that they could have reasonably have occurred because typists made the same keyboard errors.
I accept that this "hollow referencing" may be a problem but I have doubts that requiring the database from which the reference was drawn will do much to prevent this dishonest short-cut practice. What it can accomplish is that professors and reviewers can verify that the article is indeed included in the online bibliographic database -- but that is the limit of what this can do and I don't find that to be a good enough reason.
"the erroneous citations increased as the paper was cited year after year."
That's horrific. Thanks for your input, I too am not sure that the database requirement is the best solution for this 'hollow referencing' problem but I now have a better understanding of the issue and appreciate the merits of their intent.
After looking at the links on 'citation mutations' article posted by Rintze the conlusion that "it is possible that in the future the number of wrong citations can be minimised by using reference software tools - provided that the database entries are correct in the first place." leaves hope that tools like Zotero will hopefully gain more currency and help provide positive balance for the problem.
@adamsmith
Not only on a typwriter but with a hot wax seal to prove authenticity! But in all seriousness you are right on the point that fbennett makes.
In law journals and others where a vendor may attach extra resources it actually makes sense.
www.safetylit.org/thesaurus/thesis-all.pdf
By the way, I used Zotero.
Thank you for sharing your work on this issue. I found the information you presented both enlightening and scary at the same time!
I was not even aware that there was a bibliometric discipline so your writing has encouraged me to take even more care with my citations.
This is to point out that the case you are using—databases such as JSTOR/EBSCO, which host otherwise currently available print journals—is indeed the least important case, but not the only one at issue here.