et-al-display-last behaviour

theplc

I'm trying to modify a style (American Chemical Society) so that when there are more than three authors, it only displays the final author instead of the first one. This is because generally the last author is the primary investigator and their name conveys more information.

This is for use in presentations and other less formal settings where it makes sense to only display the last author.

I've managed to get it to work using the et-al-display-last="true" setting, but using this option removes the "et al" from the author list.

I understand why it does this (generally users will set it to display the first X authors, then an ellipsis, then the last author), but I'm curious if it's possible to get it to display the "et al" when using this feature.

Any ideas?

adamsmith

Not possible, no. et-al-use-last replaces "et al." by and elipsis and the last author. You can't have both. (I'm actually surprised you're able to get it to just display the last author -- that's a quirk of the citation processor and I wouldn't consider it stable behavior)

theplc

Thanks adam. Figured it wasn't possible but wanted to check.

Getting it to display only last author requires also setting et-al-display-first="0" as well.

edit: my mistake, et-al-use-first is of course what i meant.

adamsmith

(that's et-al-use-first="0" for posterity -- and as I say, while I'm very glad this works and it probably will keep working, it's nothing we cover in tests so it may well stop working in the future)

pierini

Hi, I was looking for the same functionality but not able to find the option. I'd like a lot to see in the list the last authors name, as it is normally the one that identify the group. I'm using Zotero on Ubuntu 16.04.
Could you help me?

bwiernik

Do you mean in a citation style or displayed in the Zotero program item view?

pierini

I mean in the Zotero program item view. To identify immediately which group has done which work my supervisor told me to use and memorize the last name of the article (or the last two).

adamsmith

Sorry, not possible.