Multi-Citation Sorting (APSA author-date)

SMetzger

I've stumbled across an interesting curiosity when it comes to the sort order of in-text citations with APSA's style format. Say there are three articles:
Smith, John. 2006. "B"
Smith, John, and Jane Jones. 2002. "A"
Smith, John, John Doe, and Jane Jones. 2007. "C"

If they are all in the same in-text citation, they should be ordered:
(Smith 2006; Smith, Doe, and Jones 2007; Smith and Jones 2002)

Instead, I get:
(Smith and Jones 2002; Smith, Doe, and Jones 2007; Smith 2006)

This incorrect ordering is also reflected in the bibliography.

I've fiddled some with the set of <sort> fields associated with the citations and the bibliography, but to no avail. What am I missing?

adamsmith

Could you export the three items in question as a Zotero.RDF (right-click--> export selected items) and make them available, either by uploading the file somwhere or (this would be preferred) pasting it's contents to a public gist at gist.github.com and post the link here.

SMetzger

Absolutely. I exported three examples of citation 'sets' that illustrate the problem, and pasted the content of the RDF to a public gist, per your request. The gist link is:
https://gist.github.com/1434798

Thanks!

fbennett

With the APSA style and the latest processor, they come out in the correct order for me here.

SMetzger

That's interesting. I double-checked my processor version and style file version. Both are up-to-date (v2.1.10 for Zotero, last update 26OCT11 for the APSA CSL). I looked at the citation order for the gist test set using the reference test pane in FF, and they still come out scrambled for me. I did, though, notice two things:

1. While the in-text citation is in the wrong order, the bibliography is almost entirely in the right order.


2. The only ordering error in the bibliography is the set of Colaresi cites. Based on alphabetical order, it should go Colaresi 2006; then Colaresi, Rasler, and Thompson 2007; ending with Colaresi and Thompson 2002. (...right?)

fbennett

You're right, and I get the same result here, both in the citation and the bibliography. Thanks for pushing back. Looking into this now.

fbennett

Okay, I've filed a revised version of the processor that fixes this. The source of the sort failure appears to have been the inclusion of the "and" join in the names list when used as a sort key. The sort behavior should correct itself when the new processor is incorporated into Zotero.

SMetzger

Thanks for looking into it! Glad to hear that it'll be fixed in a future update.