Inserting Asterisks into Zotero Bibliography

cf2059

Hello,

I'm writing a meta-analysis, and am attempting to insert asterisks next to the references of reviewed studies in the bibliography. This seems like something that researchers might often want to do in literature reviews, but I have now spent about 2 days battling with this issue in zotero for word plugin (Windows Office 2016) without success. When I use the "edit bibliography" tab to insert asterisks next to references, then it seems to create some bug whereby all formatting on that particular reference disappears, including (importantly) the italics for the journal title. When I try to italicize the journal title manually for each reference using the edit bibliography tab, this also fails, and the italics don't show up in the document. [Needless to say, when I edit references outside of the "edit bibliography" tab, all of my edits disappear the next time the document refreshes.]

I have just tried updating to the newest version of Zotero (5.0.12), which supposedly automatically updates plugins when installed, but this made no difference to the bug.

The only way I can see forward is to remove all of my field codes before inserting the asterics, and I would like to avoid doing this, if possible.

Has anyone found a solution to this bug?
Many thanks!

adamsmith

While this might be a bug, editing the bibliography manually breaks reference updating generally, so a) it's not that much different from removing field codes and b) I'd recommend staying away from it either way. I think the cleanest method for you would be to add the stars in the Extra field of the items in Zotero and change the citation style.
I made such a style for our local purposes and you can download it from here:
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/adam3smith/custom-csl/master/mcp-custom-style.csl

bwiernik

As a meta-analyst myself, I would recommend an alternative approach entirely, if possible. Rather than listing the sources contributing to the meta-analysis in the main bibliography with asterisks, I would recommend providing them as a separate list in an Appendix or online supplement (e.g., as we did here: https://doi.org/10.1108/JMP-07-2013-0221).

Besides being easier to produce with Zotero, this has the benefit of making it easier to read through the list of contributing sources (no more searching for asterisks), and you can use asterisks, daggers, and other prefix symbols to mark more substantive information in the list (e.g., which studies contributed to the meta-analyses of different variables, which studies contributed effect sizes versus reliability coefficients, etc.).

(An even better approach would be to include each reference with the full meta-analytic data table in an online supplement. This really can help to foster reproducibility and interpretability of meta-analysis results. I kind of regard the asterisk'ed reference list as an artifact of older meta-analysis reporting practices that are slowly being replaced with more comprehensive presentation of the raw meta-analysis data.)

adamsmith

(I know nothing about meta analyses, so on that count absolutely take what bwiernik has to say over my advice, which is purely technical).

cf2059

Thanks so much for the prompt comments. bwiernik, I agree with you about the advantages of a supplemental dataset. In our case, however, a reviewer has asked explicitly for the asterisks, and it's possible s/he wants just that and not an extrapolation. I'll keep this in mind for future, though!

Adamsmith...do you happen to have further instructions on how to use your style? I've only ever applied styles from the repository, and wasn't readily able to download this style in the same manner. How would I go about downloading this, and how would I then apply the asterisks within the bibliography once it's downloaded? [And please forgive the basic questions! I'm not a total luddite, but I'll admit that I'm not much of a computer whizz either.]

adamsmith

To download, right-click --> Save link as. Typically you should then be able to install it simply by double-clicking. If that doesn't work, install it using the + sign in the "Cite / styles" tab of the Zotero preferences. The style currently put's the Extra field on the left margin, which may not be what you want, so you may need to modify it (also, it's probably not otherwise the style you need). It's just an example of what's possible.

bwiernik

What style are you using? Chicago, APA, something else? adamsmith's style is Chicago. If you want another style, then add this line to the start of the bibliography section of the style:
<text variable="note" suffix=" " .>

You can also replace "note" with some other field if you use Extra for other things in your data (e.g., you could use "call-number").

(Also, certainly your call regarding adding asterisks versus a list in the Appendix. I would be really surprised, though, if a reviewer specifically wanted the asterisk format versus just wanting a complete list of included sources.)

cf2059

Thanks very much bwiernik and adamsmith. And yes, it's a psych journal so I'm using APA style for this. I just went on a little adventure trying to edit this style, but I think it will likely take more time than I have to learn.

bwiernik, I could give it a go with the supplementary list of references. [It's an intense review process at this journal--we got 45 suggested changes from a single reviewer--so where possible, I'm trying to keep responses short and simple (e.g., "done").] Do you happen to have any methods citations you like that advocate for such an approach? No worries if not, I just thought that might help.

bwiernik

What journal are you submitting to? I can send you some meta-analyses that have used that approach. Otherwise, I can send you some meta-analysis reporting recommendations and examples generally.