(German) legal commentaries

Blackhole1

Hi,

I have been working on a style for a German law journal (neue-juristische-wochenschrift.csl).
One big problem with German legal styles are legal "commentaries".

Currently, the style translates all legal commentaries (which are marked as entry-encyclopedia) as follows:

Bearbeiter, in: Zöller, ZPO, 30. Aufl. 2014, <locator>
<"Bearbeiter" italic>, in: <authors/editor non-italic>, <title short>, [<edition>. Aufl. ]<year>, <locator/cited page(s)>

However, there is one more case I have not yet found a solution for. As you can see, the style uses <authors/editors> and <title short>.

Now, there are some legal commentaries that have authors or editors that are not supposed to show and some where additionally, a different title (comparable to shorttitle) should show.

Example 1: "Palandt, BGB". Its founder Otto Palandt is long deceased and other continue the commentary; the German National Library lists the editors/authors as follows: Palandt, Otto [Hrsg.], Bassenge, Peter, Brudermüller, Gerd [Bearb.], etc.

However, citations would look like this:
Bassenge, in: Palandt, BGB, 30. Aufl. 2014, <locator>
or alternatively (depending on the journal and sometimes on the type of article you are writing, this should probably be achieved by some kind of sub-style independent from the original):

Palandt-Bassenge, BGB, 30. Aufl. 2014, <locator>

in general:

<"Bearbeiter" italic>, in: <commentary-title>, <title short>, [<edition>. Aufl. ]<year>, <locator/cited page(s)>
or
<commentary-title>-<"Bearbeiter" italic>, <title short>, [<edition>. Aufl. ]<year>, <locator/cited page(s)>

I have been thinking how to accomplish this using Zotero and CSL, but so have have not come to a solution. The information, which commentaries are to be cited this way cannot be found in any database, it is just "common" to cite like this. <title short> is already taken.

One solution would be to use some other field to save <commentary-title> and in the CSL use this different citation style when <commentary-title> is set.
A different solution would be to use even a different item type (I don't know how many more are "free" like entry-encyclopedia).

What do you think on this in general and do you know which field/item I could use?

To make it even more complicated, there is one more special case:

Some commentaries (e.g. by the publisher Beck) are cited even more differently.
Example: The Commentary for the Telecommunications Act (TKG). Editors are two lawyers. However, citation should be like this:

<"Bearbeiter" italic>, in: <commentary-title>, [<edition>. Aufl. ]<year>, <locator/cited page(s)>
Bearbeiter, in: BeckTKG, 4. Aufl. 2013, <locator>

or alternatively

<commentary-title>-<"Bearbeiter" italic>, [<edition>. Aufl. ]<year>, <locator/cited page(s)>
BeckTKG-Bearbeiter, 4. Aufl. 2013, <locator>

As you can see, in difference to the "Palandt", <title short> is omitted because it is coded in <commentary-title>.

Do you have any idea/suggestions how to implement these two very special citations?

Thank you very much.

zuphilip

The DNB has also the role "Begründer" (=founder) for persons associated to a book, e.g. Zöller ZPO. In my understanding it is a good idea to handle all persons associated to an item as creators with different roles. Currently author, contributor, editor, seriesEditor, translator can be used for a encyclopediaEntry (but contributor seems not to be mapped to any CSL variable). Maybe, you could use series editor for your examples?

I couldn't follow about the short title question. If you want to use "BeckTKG" in your citations and no other title, then you may just write it in the encyclopediaTitle field. No?

Maybe it helps to have concrete examples online available (e.g. open zotero group).

Blackhole1

@zuphilip: Thank you.

That is all the information I need to solve problem #2: If encyclopediaTitle is set, then use a different style.

And almost all the information for problem #1:

Now, what I would like to do is the following:

if there is one or more <series-editors> then <use-macro1>
else <use-macro2>

If that is possible then problem #1 can be solved by using <series-editors>.

adamsmith

I'm pretty sure
<if variable="collection-editor">
should just work.

zuphilip

I guess so too.

@adamsmith: How "hacky" do you consider the solution then? Or is just expanding the semantical meaning of some variables?

adamsmith

I consider this quite hacky ;). But I'm also not really sure what else to do about these types of things other than hacks - we can't possibly extend CSL to a degree where it can accommodate creator types like "people who took over editorship after the original editor died"

Given the mess that's legal citations, I'm willing to make a bit more of an exemption for hacks than for other styles. What I generally object to, even in legal styles, is using Zotero's extra (CSL's note) because that will just cause weirdness when used with other reference managers and suddenly people's notes will show up mysteriously in citations, which I assume won't go over well.

Blackhole1

Unfortunately, it does not see to work (see the macro below).

It works as long as I have only the series-editor field set:

Bearbeiter, in: Palandt, BGB, 73. Aufl. 2014, ...

As soon as I add an author or editor, the CSL uses them too.

Bearbeiter, in: Palandt/Bassenge, BGB, 73. Aufl. 2014, ...


<if variable="collection-editor">
<names variable="collection-editor">
<name form="short" delimiter="/" name-as-sort-order="all"/>
</names>
</if>
<else>
<names variable="author editor">
<name form="short" delimiter="/" name-as-sort-order="all"/>
</names>
</else>
</choose>

zuphilip

Hm.. that is strange. Can you export your zotero item for the commentary as CSL JSON and post the output here?

Blackhole1

Of course:

[
{
"id": 339,
"type": "entry-encyclopedia",
"title": "Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch: mit Nebengesetzen ; insbesondere mit Einführungsgesetz (Auszug) einschließlich Rom I-, Rom II- und Rom III-Verordnungen sowie Haager Unterhaltsprotokoll und EU-Erbrechtsverordnung, Allgemeines Gleichbehandlungsgesetz (Auszug), Wohn- und Betreuungsvertragsgesetz, BGB-Informationspflichten-Verordnung, Unterlassungsklagengesetz, Produkthaftungsgesetz, Erbbaurechtsgesetz, Wohnungseigentumsgesetz, Versorgungsausgleichsgesetz, Lebenspartnerschaftsgesetz, Gewaltschutzgesetz",
"publisher": "Beck",
"publisher-place": "München",
"edition": "73",
"source": "Open WorldCat",
"event-place": "München",
"ISBN": "9783406644009 3406644007",
"shortTitle": "BGB",
"language": "German",
"collection-editor": [
{
"family": "Palandt",
"given": "Otto"
}
],
"issued": {
"date-parts": [
[
"2014"
]
]
}
}
]

zuphilip

I copied your macro from above into APA style for testing an it seems to work for me as expected. Maybe you can share your current version in over gist?

Blackhole1

I have no idea why, but now it works here as well... Sorry and thank you very much!