year-suffix disambiguation problem

charleswirth

Hello all.

I've been having an annoying issue with year-suffix disambiguation.

My citation style (wich was downloaded from the Zotero Repository) is configured to display inline citations as (AUTHOR, year, locator). For example (DOE, 2002, p. 23)

So, I have in my library two bills of the year 2006, and two legal cases of the same year, all four from the same author. Those were all gathered from government sites in the internet, and, thus, have no locator to display. So far no problem, Zotero would just not display any locator (as there are none) and disambiguate correctly (AUTHOR, 2006a, 2006b, 2006c, 2006d).

Thing is, since those documents were gathered from the internet, I have to display the source website in the inline citation, like (AUTHOR, 2006, www.url.gov). So I made the apropriate change in the .csl, so that it would display the URL variable, but, when that change is made, Zotero start disambiguating them according, aparently, to the exact rendering of the elements in the inline citation.

For example if the bills have the same URL and the legal cases have the same URL it displays like (AUTHOR, 2006a, www.url1.gov; 2006a, www.url2.gov; 2006b, www.url1.gov; 2006b, www.url2.gov).
If all four have the same URL, it displays like (AUTHOR, 2006a, www.url.gov; 2006b, www.url.gov; 2006c, www.url.gov; 2006d, www.url.gov).
If all four have different URLs, it displays like (AUTHOR, 2006, www.url1.gov; 2006, www.url2.gov; 2006, www.url3.gov; 2006, www.url4.gov)

Since all are from the same author, what I need is 2006a, 2006b, 2006c and 2006d, regardless of the url that is displayed.

I don't know if that is possible, but if that is I'd appreciate if someone could explain how.

This is the citation code before the addition of the URL variable:

<citation et-al-min="4" et-al-use-first="1" disambiguate-add-year-suffix="true" collapse="year">
<sort>
<key macro="author"/>
<key variable="issued"/>
</sort>
<layout prefix="(" suffix=")" delimiter="; ">
<group>
<text suffix=", " macro="author-short"/>
<text macro="issued-year"/>
<text prefix=", " macro="citation-locator"/>
</group>
</layout>
</citation>

These are the macros invoked:

<macro name="author-short">
<names variable="author">
<name form="short" name-as-sort-order="all" sort-separator=", " initialize-with=". " delimiter="; " delimiter-precedes-last="never">
<name-part name="family" text-case="uppercase"/>
<name-part name="given" text-case="uppercase"/>
</name>
<substitute>
<names variable="editor"/>
<names variable="translator"/>
<choose>
<if type="book">
<text variable="title" form="short"/>
</if>
<else>
<text variable="title" form="short" quotes="true"/>
</else>
</choose>
</substitute>
</names>
</macro>
<macro name="issued-year">
<choose>
<if variable="issued" match="any">
<date variable="issued">
<date-part name="year"/>
</date>
</if>
<else>
<text value="[s.d.]"/>
</else>
</choose>
</macro>
<macro name="citation-locator">
<group>
<label variable="locator" form="short"/>
<text variable="locator" prefix=" "/>
</group>
</macro>
<macro name="author">
<names variable="author">
<name delimiter="; " delimiter-precedes-last="always" name-as-sort-order="all">
<name-part name="family" text-case="uppercase"/>
<name-part name="given"/>
</name>
<label form="short" text-case="capitalize-first" prefix=" (" suffix=".)"/>
<substitute>
<names variable="editor"/>
<names variable="translator"/>
<text macro="title"/>
</substitute>
</names>
</macro>

And this is the citation code after the addition of the URL variable:

<citation et-al-min="4" et-al-use-first="1" disambiguate-add-year-suffix="true" collapse="year">
<sort>
<key macro="author"/>
<key variable="issued"/>
</sort>
<layout prefix="(" suffix=")" delimiter="; ">
<group>
<text suffix=", " macro="author-short"/>
<text macro="issued-year"/>
<text prefix=", " macro="citation-locator"/>
<text variable="URL" prefix=", &lt;" suffix="&gt;"/>
</group>
</layout>
</citation>

Thanks!

adamsmith

The post removed all the URL code (wrap in <code> </code> html tags), but from your description I think the answer is no, that is not possible. You'll only get disambiguation letters if the citations are otherwise ambiguous. If they have different URLs, that's not the case.

charleswirth

adamsmith

Just edited the post with the html tags for it to show the example URLs and the code mentioned.

But I guess you're right, since the URLs themselves disambiguate the citation, I won't get the disambiguation letters if the URL is not the same.

Thanks

adamsmith

yes, that's exactly what I thought it was. No way to do that then, I'm afraid.

charleswirth

Found out a workaround for the disambiguation issue:

Since what I need is the URL to serve as a locator when the document type is bill or case, what I did was edit the CSL file to suppres the locator label when the document type is bill or case, and then manually paste the needed URL in the locator field in every citation.

It's a little time consuming, but at least now Zotero reads all citations of the same autor and year as ambiguous and disambiguates them by adding sequential year-suffixes in all of them, despite of the different URLs (which it nows reads as locators).

Not ideal, but it's a workaround.