European Union Interinstitutional Style (Funded Proposals) - Footnote

hayley.watson

Hi all,

I'm not sure if anyone can help me. I am currently trialing the use of the European Union Interinstitutional Style - the bibliography works very well - however I am having some trouble with the use of footnotes.

For instance within the footnotes, the first time you enter a reference you would enter the full reference (which works great), the second time, you would use:

"Authors Surname, Year, p. #"

However, within the system it seems to come out as:

"Authors Surname, Title"

Is there a simple way of amending this - or do you have to do it manually each time?

Thanks for your time!

adamsmith

That's easy to change - is that documented somewhere? I don't remember how the current short form came about, but I remember that I worked with some people pretty involved in the whole EU business (though that doesn't mean this couldn't be wrong - I just want to make sure).

hayley.watson

Hi thanks for your reply.

I have had a quick look at the interinstitutional guidelines but can't see anything specific there - but of the reports I've worked on recently it seems to be a common method used by authors.

cmagri2

The EU Interinstitutional Style Guide uses a parenthetical, not a footnote referencing system.

Instructions are at http://publications.europa.eu/code/en/en-000100.htm, in particular http://publications.europa.eu/code/en/en-250500.htm#i554:

"References are cited in the text using the author’s surname and year of publication, for example (Barrett, 1991), and the bibliography is printed in alphabetical order. Where an author has two or more publications cited from the same year, they should be listed as a, b, and so on, for example (Barrett, 1991a)."

adamsmith

Thank you. I'll check with the folks who advised me on this originally and get back to you, but I'm swamped so that could take a week or two.

hayley.watson

Thanks for the information - this is something we will look into as well.

sdspieg

As the original 'culprit' let me just say that while we may work on quite a few EU projects, we are far from experts in the interinstitutional style guide. All we did was refer Sebastian to the instructions we had received (which I posted here https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-opIuO3xlZsYkV4dXVfVm1PYWM/edit?usp=sharing) and he was kind enough to produce us a Zotero style. We even corresponded with the person responsible for this at the EU Publications Office (the keeper of the ISG), asking for more detailed guidance, but he responded:

"However, presently, it is impossible for us to develop the subject because all our time is devoted to the production of the style guide in the other languages (+ creation of HR version), and we are only 3 persons at the coordination level. So we are presently limiting our actions to strict updates - no developments possible because of lack of time - while producing the other paper versions (must be finished by November 2012).

NB: the problem is that if we develop those references in the EN version, we'll have to reflect the change in all other versions - quite a large work, requiring time.

But I promise I'll keep your document and we shall use it as soon as possible to improve the point dedicated to bibliographies."

That was in November 2011. So essentially, we have been using that style while we awaited more detailed guidance from the ISG. From the links given here, it doesn't seem to me that much has changed since then. Or am I missing sthg in those? Either way - if we can improve the Zotero style, by all means, let's do so! But my hunch is that the people who have given those guidelines may not have thought through all the details of creating such a style. And I bet you they'd be open to reasonable suggestions. So maybe we should get in touch with them again? And maybe get them into this discussion?

hayley.watson

If they were willing to discuss this it could be worth while.

sdspieg

It turns out that the team that produces the European Union's Interinstitutional Style Guide doesn't have the resources to come up with a standard for us. The main stumbling block being that they would have to translate whatever it is they would come up with in 24 languages.
I'm actually getting interested in this as a case of EU decisionmaking (and international standard setting/emergence)! Does anybody happen to know of any literature on how bibliographical styles 'emerge', on which ones are 'leading' (and why), and on whether there are any emerging (global) standards on this?
As an 'end user' of these things, who produces many thousands of footnotes per year (so Zotero has literally saved me many months of my time), I honestly don't care too much about any of these things. My three main criteria would be
1) the lowest possible transaction costs for the 'producers' (so the more standards, the better);
2) the inclusion of all the relevant elements in there (which to me increasingly includes the ability to transliterate and/or translate titles in other languages); and
3) the style contains adequate and logical delineation of the various components that go into a footnote/bibliography (things like: have the more important elements - say the publication vs the article - be hightlighted in SOME way; have a fairly standard way of 'structuring' the citation - things like dates either up front or in the back, etc.)
I think most of my colleagues are in the same boat. We care about attribution. We care about being systematic and clear. But most of the rest I honestly don't care about - we just want an easy and accurate style that we can use! Things like 'American (or Anglo-Saxon, or Chinese, or any other form of cultural) imperialism' in such matters are in my mind pretty much irrelevant. Path dependency shouldn't matter either: if we can find a Pareto-superior style, we should just use that as a standard (until somebody comes up with a better idea). As long as I don't have to waste days and days JUST formatting these [expletive self-censured] footnotes!
So again - if anybody knows of any good literature on this, I'd appreciate the pointer. In ANY type of format :) And also - is there ANYTHING even close to an international 'standard'? Is there any way for people at Zotero to provide us with some data on this (e.g. are certain styles being used more, less...)
And finally - for the Europeans amongst us: now that the EU is starting to REALLY be a major player in the research world (also globally), couldn't we somehow come up with a (bottom-up) standard? And maybe even help the people at the EU ISG with those translations? How hard can it be: we'd just have to agree on a style, provide exhaustive examples for different cases, document that (sparsely I would say - maybe even just the examples might suffice), crowdsource the translation of that limited documentation, and then offer the result to the ISG team?
Any thoughts would be very welcome.

-Stephan

adamsmith

Zotero doesn't have data on how much people _use_ styles. They could probably check which styles are most downloaded, but the most common styles are hopefully among those included in Zotero in the first place.

I'm working with Taylor&Francis on getting their journal styles into CSL/Zotero and they're pushing their journals to use one of these five:
APA, Chicago author-date, Chicago note, Council of Science Editors (author-date), and Vancouver/NLM.
I think that's a pretty good summary of the most commonly used styles, though I don't think CSE would normally make it. IEEE, MLA, and MHRA are other contenders, depending on fields.

As for the original request - considering that there doesn't appear such a thing like the actual EU ISG for references I'll leave the style as is.

If you want to change it there are some general instructions here:
http://www.zotero.org/support/dev/citation_styles/style_editing_step-by-step
note in particular the link to the visual editor at the top. We're happy to answer specific questions here.