ASA style in OOo

GAIL

For ASA style citations in OOo, if you cite a 3 or more authors paper twice, you get the following:

text1 (Author1 et al. 1999) and text2 (Author1, Author2, and Author3 1999) and so on.

According to ASA, it should be the other way round.

Gitty K

I noticed the same problem...

Gitty K

I have recently been struggling with this again and I was wondering if there is any solution to this or if there is a fix in the making...

Gitty K

I found out that ASA dev style fixes this problem, but it uses et al. also for the first citation. According to ASA guidelines, the first citation of a work with three authors should list all of them and only subsequent citations of the same work have et al. Only works with more than three authors have et al. throughout. (see: http://www.asanet.org/page.ww?name=Quick+Style+Guide&section=Sociology+Depts)

Also I noticed that the original problem (et al. in the first, full author list in subsequent citations) exists with American Political Sciences, but only for works with more than 3 authors. For works with three authors, all of them are listed throughout, while this should only happen in the first citation. In the reference list, multiple authors are not listed but replaced by et al.
(I couldn't find any dev version for this style)

bdarcus

The rules are confusing on et al though. What happens if you have more than three authors? Does it use the first three plus et al on the first?

Gitty K

I guess I couldn't make myself clear so maybe this can clarify it:
ASA (dev) basically uses et al. for all citations with three or more authors. So you get:
(Devine et al. 1999) ... text ... (Devine et al. 1999) ... text ... (Devine et al. 1999)

What it should do (at least in my understanding of it):
three authors: list all authors the first time, use et al. thereafter, like:
(Devine, Plant, Harrison 1999) ... text ... (Devine et al. 1999) ... text ... (Devine et al. 1999)
Four or more authors: always use et al., like:
(Ferree et al. 2002) ... text ... (Ferree et al. 2002) ...

As for AmPolScAss (see http://dept.lamar.edu/polisci/DRURY/drury.html): It's the same rules for three authors and for more than three authors, that is: Use all names the first time you cite a publication, use et al. thereafter.
What you now get is:
(Ferree et al. 2002)⁠ ... text ... (Ferree, Gamson, Gerhards, and Rucht 2002)⁠... text ... (Ferree, Gamson, Gerhards, and Rucht 2002)
So basically it currently inverts the rule.

What it should be is:
(Ferree, Gamson, Gerhards, and Rucht 2002)⁠ ... text ... (Ferree et al. 2002)⁠ ... text ... (Ferree et al. 2002)⁠ ...

Also: in the reference list at the end it uses et al. and doesn't list all authors. So what you now get is:
Ferree, Myra Marx et al. 2002. “Four models of the public sphere in modern democracies.” Theory and Society 31(3):289-324.

I think, it should be:
Ferree, Myra Marx, Wiliam Gamson, Jürgen Gerhards, and Dieter Rucht. 2002. "Four models of ...

Thanks for any help!

Gitty K

I found the updated dev version of ASA, thanks for looking into this.
It solves the problem for three-author-citations, but there remain issues in the case of more than three authors (@bdarcus: I understand your question now). I think, in this case it should be et al. from the first time on you cite a publication. What I now get is
(Hopkins, McKie, Watson, et al. 2005)⁠ ... (Hopkins et al. 2005)⁠ ... (Hopkins et al. 2005)⁠ (It puts et al. instead of the fourth author, but it should be only et al.: Hopkins et al. 2005)

As for APSA, I should add to the above said, that right now it never uses et al. for three authors, but lists all of them each time, where it should equally fully list them first time, and use et al. thereafter. The et al. problem in the reference list at the end only occurs with 4+ author publications.

bdarcus

The easiest way to fix this is for you to look at the styles directly and figure out what the settings should be for the et-al options. The part of the code that sets this behavior is this:

<citation>
<option name="et-al-min" value="3"/>
<option name="et-al-use-first" value="3"/>
<option name="et-al-subsequent-min" value="3"/>
<option name="et-al-subsequent-use-first" value="1"/>


I am assuming you want that second option set to a value of "1", but am not sure.

Gitty K

I really don't know much about programming of any kind. I did manage to figure out how to change styles and tried setting the second option to 1 as suggested. The result is et al. for each and all citations with three or more authors.

But as I've been trying to say: There are different rules for three-author-citations and for citations with four or more authors.
3 authors: (Devine, Plant, Harrison 1999) ... text ... (Devine et al. 1999) ... text ... (Devine et al. 1999) -- i.e. first time in the text list all authors, then et al.

4/more authors: (Ferree et al. 2002) ... text ... (Ferree et al. 2002) ... -- i.e. always et al.

I don't know how else I could explain this. Not knowing much about this I can only guess, that the code above perhaps needs some kind of if-clause to differentiate between these two cases, but I wouldn't know how to do this or if this is indeed a possible solution.

Setting the second option to 1 makes the style usable as the initial problem is solved, but this leaves the style somewhat incorrect in terms of the ASA specifications (unless I'm terribly misunderstanding them).

I very much appreciate the patience and help I am getting here. I wish I could do more than just giving user input, pointing out problems and creating work for others by demanding solutions. Maybe I'll become computer savvy enough one day to return these favors. As for now this is all I can do.

I can try to play with the values in the above mentioned code to fix the problem in APSA where there is no distinction between 3 and 4/+ author citations.

bdarcus

Don't get distracted by your lack of programming background; this is just basic logic, that happens to be expressed in angle brackets and such.

I just committed a change for asa that has this:

<option name="et-al-min" value="4"/>
<option name="et-al-use-first" value="1"/>
<option name="et-al-subsequent-min" value="3"/>
<option name="et-al-subsequent-use-first" value="1"/>

I think that might express what you're saying above; can you confirm?

Gitty K

Yes, yes, yes! This works perfectly now! Thank you so much.

Positive side-effect: you did get me interested in learning more about style programming...