Changes to fields and item types for Zotero 5.1

191012141517
  • @mgreis -- there is talk about allowing custom item types in the medium run, which would allow for more fine-grained distinctions like the ones you're after (and which are shared by other people with different needs of differentiation in other fields), but I have no idea if we're talking one, five, or ten years for that to happen.
  • Oh, it would be nice to add DOI to Reports also. I'm starting to seem some government research reports getting DOIs, although they fit the Report type better than they do Book or Journal article.
  • Yes, getting dois for all item types
  • For the next release would it be possible, and reasonable, to unpin this thread and start a new thread? This is has just gotten so long that it is hard to follow.
  • Please, reconsider the item type "review" to be added as an independent object and not just to be recognized by the "reviewed author". I know there has already been discussion about that, but it would be helpful for many people I guess. Thanks, anna
  • I concur with max1836 in starting a new thread. I dislike these forums, in general, and wish there was better organization/tags/etc (that's another rant), but it would be nice to start a new thread for each release, perhaps with a list of "Added/Still needed/In development" item types, etc. Keeps everything a bit more organized and easier to follow.
  • There has not been a relevant release since this thread started.
  • Please add the Greek ano teleia (that's how you can find it in word symbols) to the punctuation marks.
    English semi-colon is the Greek question mark!

    Take a look at the example
    (Pargament, 1999· Zinnbauer κ.ά., 1999) - instead of (Pargament, 1999; Zinnbauer κ.ά., 1999)
  • I've encountered this question before but, as I remember the answer was to do with Greek alphabet characters versus other alphabetical characters in the sentence. @bwiernik Is this your area if experience?
  • I’m not sure what the issue being described is? If it’s that using Greek with a style like APA still uses semicolons, the solution is to make a new style that adjusts the delimiters. Delimiters are not localizable in CSL (and they really couldn’t be).
  • Delimiters are not localizable in CSL (and they really couldn’t be).
    I think this is worth some more thought. This won't happen quickly, but we've gotten a similar request for Iranian delimiters, and if we want to keep the number of styles reasonable, adding some localization logic to delimiters seems like a good idea (another candidate is the default behavior of "delimiter-precedes-last"). But just to be clear, this isn't easy to do and we definitely won't try to get it in a CSL version before Zotero 5.1, so we're looking at definitely more than a year before there's any chance of this happening. Until then, separate styles are the only way to go.
  • @bwiernik
    Yes, the issue is that in Greek we use semi-colons as question marks. Would it be possible for me to adjust it?
    I can always do it manually each time, but it would be great to have it automated :)
  • edited December 18, 2018
    Yes, editing the style would be pretty easy. Basic instructions here: https://www.zotero.org/support/dev/citation_styles/style_editing_step-by-step

    1. Change the style title and ID at the top of the style (such as to “apa-greek”—the link doesn’t have to be real).
    2. Add default-locale="el-Gr" to the “style” line in the second line of the style
    3. Throughout the style, change the “delimiter=” information to the correct symbols.

    If you have any questions, please start a new thread and we would be happy to help.
  • Thanks a lot. I opened the editor but I am afraid I might mess it up, so I'd better leave it as it is for now and fix it after I had finished my paper :)
  • you can't break things with the editor
  • Presently, publication place does not download for books downloaded from Google Books -- at least, for me. I would like to see this data automatically downloaded so that I don't have to manually type it in. A small thing, but it would be a nice add.
  • Google books doesn’t include that data on their page. For best results, I recommend copying the ISBN from the page and add it to Zotero using the Magic Wand tool.
  • That's good information. Thank you.
  • some journal abbreviations are wrong. For example,"american journal of transplantation", when you selected “using MEDLINE journal abbreviation” output style,the reference would be "American journal of transplantation : official journal of the American Society of Transplantation and the American Society of Transplant Surgeons.", not "Am J Transplant". It should be "Am J Transplant" in the MEDLINE abbreviation.
  • Hello ! I hope I'm not too late, but I have a small improvement to request. A a History student I often have to cite sources following the following syntax (here I ignore formatting) :

    "Name of the source author, Title of the source, Name of the editor, Name of the book where the source has been edited, Location, Date."
    For instance : "Julius Caesar, Bellum Gallicum, ed. and trans. F. W. Kelsey, Caesar's Gallic War, Boston, 1886".

    I had no major problem programming a CSL style for that, because I'm using the field "Extra" for the title of the source, "Author" for the ancient author, "Editor" and/or "Translator" for the author of the modern book where the source is, and "Title" for the title of the modern book. I think it's better to go this way because it permits to format the modern edition according to it's type : apart from the source's author and original title, it permits to register a book chapter as a book chapter, an article as an article, etc... Therefore I don't think a special type for "classic" and "ancient book" would be pertinent. It works well except for the "thesis" type, where it's not possible to assign an editor nor a translator. Would it be possible to add this possibility in the future ?
  • Sorry for the double-post : I just remembered that I had to signal the lack of "collection number" field in the "conference paper" type.
  • What you are describing can be well-captured already with “Book Section” and treating this like a book chapter (which it essentially is).
  • I think it's not, because I need to keep the proper formating of the item in which the source is edited or translated. The example given above is that of a book, but in case the source is edited in a journal article, in a thesis or in a book chapter it will not be the same : that's why I use the field "extra" to register the source title.

    Anyway, all what I suggest technically is to add the "editor" and "translator" field in the "thesis" type and the "collection number" field in the "conference paper" type.
  • I don’t think any of the changes you are suggesting are actually necessary. I’d be happy to help you figure out the best way to work with these types of items if you start a new thread.
  • I'm confused what role "thesis" plays in there (anything that's possible with thesis is possible with book), but I don't actually think we can handle the above properly with current item types: Bellum Gallicum, even though published within a larger volume here, is a book and should be in italics, but so should Caesar's Gallic War.
    For a "normal" chapter in Chicago style, the chapter/section would be in quotation marks. Not the first time this has come up.
  • Indeed that's why the "Book section" type doesn't do the job, at least for some journals that have rather (maybe too) refined requirements. I resolved the difficulty by using the field "Abstract" (not "Extra" as I wrote yesterday) for the primary source title. As it works so, it's not my point to argue about the opportunity of adding a special type or field for published primary sources.

    As for PhD dissertations, I thought that one could use the "Book" type to register them, but I changed my mind when planning to submit and article to different journals. I'm afraid that some require that we indicate the name of the university and others only the city, some that we indicate the type ("PhD dissertation", "Thèse de doctorat") and others not. With three fields dedicated to these matters, the "Thesis" type enables to handle these different expectations.

    Also, I apologize for repeating that demand, but could there be a "Series number" field in the "Conference paper" type ?
  • Also, thank you for having suggested to create a new thread about these issues. Indeed I searched the forum and didn't find one specifically dedicated to it. I will wait until I'll have finished the style I'm writing, so I can show how I managed citing primary sources and what problems I still have.
  • Here is previous discussion about books republished in anthologies (essentially what badumont is getting at): https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/comment/323503/#Comment_323503

    For conference papers, you can currently get Series numbers by adding this to Extra:
    Collection number: 123
  • Thank you for the link to the thread, which is interesting indeed. I fully understand that one cannot implement series of ad-hoc variables in Zotero and CSL, and what one has to find a solution which the tools we dipose of, which is possible for the most part. That's what I did in my style, which is already functional, notwithstanding some minor bugs and the need for cleaning up and documenting the code. For the moment I'm using the extra field as you indicated, but I just wanted to signal that it would be a small improvement to add a "Series number" field in the "Conference paper" style (in fact I don't understand why it's lacking) and a possibility of registering an editor and a translator in a "Thesis" document without using the "Extra" field. It's just making available for these types fields that already are implemented for others, and it doesn't add complexity neither to CSL nor to the Zotero interface.
  • The series number for conference papers makes sense to me, but editor and translator for thesis doesn't. What thesis would have an editor and a translator before it becomes a book?
Sign In or Register to comment.