APSA style testing

Codec

I created an APSA (American Political Science Association) style CSL. Anyone who wants to test this can follow these steps:

1) Go to the ticket. https://www.zotero.org/trac/ticket/632 (its stashed under a Harvard trac report currently)

2) Click on the attachment labelled apsa-raw.csl . Scroll to the bottom of the attachment page and click "Original Format" under "Download in other formats".

3) Open the downloaded CSL file in a text editor (e.g. drag into Notepad or TextEdit) and copy the contents to the clipboard.

4) In a Zotero-enabled Firefox, load chrome://zotero/content/tools/csledit.xul. Open the Zotero pane and select some items. Paste the CSL contents into the large text area, and you should see a preview of the items in the APSA style.

I'm not sure I've got everything covered yet, so let me know.

fmiel

Dear Codec,

Thank you.

Jon Rubin

Hi Codec, you're missing double quotation marks around chapters from edited collections.
Regards, Jon.

Codec

Thanks - fixed.

Jon Rubin

Thanks, but still got the spare space with "Suppress Author" selected.

Frit

I'm happily using the APSA style but have found a deficiency, I think.

As ref'd on:

http://www.wisc.edu/writing/Handbook/DocAPSA_RefList_Article.html

a chapter in a multi-author collection needs to have the editors of the collection listed in the reference and Zotero does not pick up on that. To correct it, it seems that (ideally) Zotero would look in the DB for the collection entry and extract the editor name(s) or there should be fields in the chapter record allowing one to add the editor names for the collection.

Thoughts?

For example, here is the Zotero-gen'd collection reference:

Sovacool, Benjamin, and Marilyn Brown, eds. 2007. Energy and American Society – Thirteen Myths. Dordrecht: Springer. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-5564-1 [Accessed July 18, 2008].

and here is a chapter in that collection:

Taylor, Jerry, and Peter Van Doren. 2007. “Energy Myth Five - Price Signals Are Insufficient to Induce Efficient Energy Investments.” In Energy and American Society – Thirteen Myths, Dordrecht: Springer, p. 125-144.

What it should be (as far as I can determine) is:

Taylor, Jerry, and Peter Van Doren. 2007. “Energy Myth Five - Price Signals Are Insufficient to Induce Efficient Energy Investments.” In Energy and American Society – Thirteen Myths, ed. Benjamin Sovacool and Marilyn Brown. Dordrecht: Springer, p. 125-144.

(although on the UWis page referenced above they don't include the page numbers, so maybe that's not desired?) I don't have the current (official) APSA style book so can't check.

??

adamsmith

the current APSA style does this correctly - this e.g. is created with APSA:

Granovetter, Mark. 2005. “Business Groups and Social Organization.” In Handbook of Economic Sociology, eds. Neil Smelser and Richard Swedberg. Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press, p. 429-450.

Check if the editors are in your bibliographic entry - if not there may be something wrong with the translator if you've imported this electronically. If you did it by hand the error is in front of the machine ;-)


Edit: just checked - the problem is the translator - but I don't think this can be solved easily, as the editors are cited nowhere on the respective site for the acticle/book section. So I suggest you add them in by hand (use the + next to the lower author twice, then use the little arrow next to author to select editor instead)

studiosus

Shouldn't there also be a space between the colon and page numbers? At the moment it makes the quotation like that:

International Sociology 21(5):633-646.

... but it should be (as it is in the American Political Science Review, European Journal of Political Research etc):

International Sociology 21(5): 633-646.

Am I right?

Rintze

Shouldn't there also be a space between the colon and page numbers?

The APSA style is based on the documentation available at http://www.wisc.edu/writing/Handbook/DocAPSA_RefList_Article.html, which doesn't show the use of such a space.

If you could provide links to the style guides of "the American Political Science Review, European Journal of Political Research etc", I can create a separate and correct style for these journals.

studiosus

Hmm, interesting. I found the reference on the apsanet.org, which states:

"For specific formatting style of citations and references, please refer to articles in the most recent issue of the APSR. And/or for unusual style or formatting issues, you may wish to consult the latest edition of The Chicago Manual of Style (15th ed.; Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 2003)." (http://www.apsanet.org/content_43805.cfm)

But the question is, whether the style used in APSR is *the* "American Political Science Association" style...?



EDIT: OK, another APSA journals as 'Perspectives on Politics' and 'PS: Political Science & Politics' are also using the same style.

"Manuscripts should include in-text citations that will correspond with endnotes and references. Endnotes and references should conform with the APSA Style Manual for Political Science and the Chicago Manual of Style." (http://www.apsanet.org/content_4979.cfm)

Rintze

But the question is, whether the style used in APSR is *the* "American Political Science Association" style...?

The 'real' style seems to be outlined in the APSA Style Manual for Political Science, of which I found a copy online (http://www.ipsonet.org/data/files/APSAStyleManual2006.pdf). It is the most recent version, as the same revision is also being sold in print on apsanet.org (http://www.apsanet.org/content_6899.cfm).

Note that on page 26 of that guide, which details the layout of journal article citations, there isn't a space between the colon and the page numbers.

studiosus

Well, actually there is a space, if you look carefully or copy-paste it somewhere ;)
It is even mentioned there below: "Put the issue number in parentheses and allow one space between the colon and the pages." (p. 26)

Anyhow, thanks for pointing out the link for the APSA manual!

Rintze

You're right. I changed the spacing issue and updated the documentation link to point towards the pdf of the style manual (https://www.zotero.org/trac/changeset/3810). To use the corrected style, look for the American Political Science Association dev style which is listed under 'Additional Styles' in the Zotero Style Repository (http://www.zotero.org/styles). Alternatively, you can install it directly via: http://www.zotero.org/styles/apsa/dev?install=1

Frit

referring back to Sept 12, 2008 from Adam:

It would be so helpful if Zotero were able to auto-fill fields in a chapter/section reference based on, say, a link to another reference -- the containing book, for example -- in the Zotero DB.

I feel so over-qualified when I enter the same info into the DB multiple times! :)

Rintze

You could start with a duplication of the relating item (e.g. the containing book) if you've already have that in your library. I understood that Zotero is planning to change to a hierarchical item model, which might make these kind of things easier to do, but that change is probably still quite far off.

Frit

OK. Thanks.

adamsmith

I fixed the double space between author and year in the in text citation

melaniefaith

My word document still has the double space between author and year in the in text citation. I'm using version 2.0b7.2. I tried refreshing, and also switching to another citation style and then back to apsa with no luck. Is there something else to do before those extra spaces will go away? Thanks.

adamsmith

yes - the updating doesn't seem to work the way I thought it did.
Install the corrected style from here:
http://www.zotero.org/styles/apsa/dev?install=1

melaniefaith

Thanks so much - it works perfectly after the install!

wdblak

I have encountered a problem with citing legal cases in a APSA-style reference list. According to the APSA Style Manual (2001), cases needed to be cited with name, year, volume, source, first page, and in parentheses district of any lower federal court. For example:

Baker v. Carr. 1962. 369 U.S. 186.

Zotero's style produces:

Baker v. Carr. 1962.

Would it be possible to correct this problem? Thanks!

adamsmith

I can have a look, but I have no idea about cases and how they're stored- so what would be in which field in Zotero here?
You can either write this out, or export an item to Zotero RDF (without note and files), open the .rdf in a text editor and paste the content here

wdblak

Here's the RDF

<rdf:RDF
xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
xmlns:dcterms="http://purl.org/dc/terms/"
xmlns:prism="http://prismstandard.org/namespaces/1.2/basic/"
xmlns:bib="http://purl.org/net/biblio#"
xmlns:z="http://www.zotero.org/namespaces/export#">
<bib:Document rdf:about="http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/92-357.ZS.html">
<dc:date>1993-06-28 1993 June 28</dc:date>
<dc:identifier>
<dcterms:URI>
<rdf:value>http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/92-357.ZS.html</rdf:value>;
</dcterms:URI>
</dc:identifier>
<dcterms:dateSubmitted>2009-12-06 18:10:23</dcterms:dateSubmitted>
<dcterms:isPartOf>
<bib:CourtReporter>
<prism:volume>509</prism:volume><dc:title>U.S.</dc:title>
</bib:CourtReporter>
</dcterms:isPartOf>
<bib:pages>630</bib:pages>
<z:court>U.S. Supreme Court</z:court>
<z:itemType>case</z:itemType>
<z:language>en-us</z:language>
<z:shortTitle>Shaw Et Al. v. Reno, Attorney</z:shortTitle>
</bib:Document>
</rdf:RDF>

The fields that Zotero should use for a APSA reference list would be:
Case Name
Date Decided (year)
Reporter Volume
Reporter
First Page

adamsmith

got it thanks.
should
Baker v. Carr. 1962. 369 U.S. 186.
be in the in-text citation, too?
and should e.g. (U.S. Supreme Court) be included in the citation? I can't distinguish between SCOTUS and other courts, so it's either the court in parentheses or not.

wdblak

In-text citations should be:
(Baker v. Carr 1962, pg_#_being_cited)

The style guide does not provide guidance for how to cite lower court decisions in-text. However in a reference list, a lower court opinion should be cited as:

Lessard v. Schmidt. 1972. 349 F. Supp. 1078 (E.D. Wisc.).

Which is the following fields:
Case Name
Date Decided (year)
Reporter Volume
Reporter
First Page
Court

fbennett

In the current CSL processor, there is no means of suppressing italics on the "v." alone. When the move to CSL 1.0 takes place, it will be possible to handle this with in-field markup.

(In anticipation of comments that party roles should be identified and the case name composed from its constitutent elements, that's not workable because the order of parties is not predictable; visual markup inside the title field is the best we can do here.)

adamsmith

try this?
http://gist.github.com/250652
go to the page.
Then download the file using the "Raw" link on the top right.
Install by draging the file to an open FF window.
Please let me know if it works so I can committ the style

wdblak

The only problem is that the case name is coming across as Baker v. Carr, rather than Baker v. Carr. But in light of Prof. Bennett's comment, I suppose this in unavoidable. I can italicize the case name myself. Otherwise the CSL works fine.

adamsmith

I can put the entire title in italics if that's better? As Frank points out the only thing that isn't possible is to put only the names in italics, not the v.

wdblak

I think it might be easier to un-italicize the "v." than italicize the two parties to the case.

Thanks so much for all the assistance. Zotero is such an incredible tool.

adamsmith

OK, I've committed the corrected style, once it's up on the repository install it from here:
http://www.zotero.org/styles/apsa/dev?install=1