no distinction in zotero for the same author and date

antjes
Hey everybody,

when I want to quote two articles of completely the same author and date (year, no other date information), zotero does not make a distinction between the sources neither in the citation in the text nor in the bibliography but would show both as i.e (BMU 2008) and (BMU 2008). I am using the Harvard citation style. What am I doing wrong or have to do to make him automatically show it as (BMU 2008) and (BMU 2008a).

Thank you very much in advance and greetings from Germany
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  • RintzeRintze
    edited May 23, 2009
    For me Harvard Reference format 1 (Author-Date) disambiguates just fine (e.g. (Asimov 2000a) & (Asimov 2000b)). Are you also using this Harvard style (which is shipped with Zotero), and not one of the other Harvard styles from the Zotero Style Repository?

    edit: in addition to fbennetts suggestions, I presume you are using a word processor in combination with a word processor plugin. If so, which word processor are you using?
  • fbennett
    edited May 23, 2009
    On a quick test with data as you describe using 2.0b4, Harvard Reference Format 1 (author-date) and the OpenOffice plugin here, I get this in the document:

    ***
    Citation (BMU 2000a; BMU 2000b).

    Bibliography
    BMU, 2000a. Book A,

    BMU, 2000b. Book B,
    ***

    So the setup I have here seems to be working normally on this use case. If you are getting different results there must be a cause, of course. If you can report your Zotero version (gear icon -> About Zotero), Firefox version (Help -> About Mozilla Firefox) and operating system (Windows/Mac/Linux) and (as Rintze says above) the exact Harvard style that you are using, it will help pin down the reason.
  • antjes
    Hey Rintze and fbennett,

    thank you very much for your help. I just downloaded the new Zotero Version and suddely it works. I am very sorry for causing inconvenience but thank you very much!
  • antjes
    Hey again,

    so, I managed by downloading the new version that it SOMETIMES distinguishes between the sources with the same author and date. Yet, sometimes it doesn´t.
    To give you the exact incident:

    I have three sources of the same kind: (BMU 2008a) (BMU 2008b) (BMU 2008c). Standing-alone, zotero dinstinguishes correctly between those. If I now add another source of the author from another year (BMU 2004), it changes the sources (depending on the new one) either into: (BMU 2008a) (BMU 2008b) (BMU 2008) or into: (BMU 2008) (BMU 2008) (BMU 2008). This behaviour is absolutely unclear to me. To avoid any interconnection between the sources themselves I deleted all the original sources and added them again as to avoid: duplications of the sources, different source types, different adding-date. When adding them I filled always the same fields with absolutely the same values (besides of course title and year). I also added the same institution.

    My word version is: Windows 2003 on Microsoft Vista
    My Firefox version is 3.0.10
    My Zotero Version is: 1.0.10
    I am using the Harvard Reference format1 and I did not change the slighest thing in any kind of setting.

    @Rintze: I just downloaded the Word plug-in about a year ago. I don´t know what a word processor and what a word processor plug-in is. If you tell me where to check, I would let you know.

    Could you let me know what the key-attributes are, zotero uses, so that I can check the values and settings as I have the feeling, that in general the function is working but sometimes just gets confused. Also, as it is a governmental source, I am using about 15 articles of the same author and up to 5 in the same year. Might that be too much?

    thank you again for helping me out.
  • RintzeRintze
    edited May 23, 2009
    If I now add another source of the author from another year (BMU 2004), it changes the sources (depending on the new one) either into: (BMU 2008a) (BMU 2008b) (BMU 2008) or into: (BMU 2008) (BMU 2008) (BMU 2008).
    That seems like a bug.
    I don´t know what a word processor and what a word processor plug-in is.
    In your case, Word 2003 and the Word plugin, respectively, so you already answered that question.

    Some more questions: which source type do you use for these sources, and what are the values of the filled-in fields (e.g. is BMU the institution or the author)?
  • antjes
    I use the german version, in which the source type is "bericht" which most probably translates into report in the english version. I use BMU as the author which is an abbreviation. In the field "institution" I put "Bundesministerium für Umwelt, Naturschutz und Reaktorsicherheit" which is the long version of the name. As when I start typing the institution, the long name already appears after having typed it once, I cannot have made a typing error.

    In case, this turns out to be a real bug, do you know the further proceeding. Should I officially address zotero.org?

    thank you
  • RintzeRintze
    edited May 23, 2009
    Should I officially address zotero.org?
    The Zotero team follows all threads in this forum, so you wouldn't need to do anything else. This is as official as it gets.

    I still can't reproduce this issue though.

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