SBLHS Citation Style for Electronic Journals with Individually Paginated Articles

dstark

SBL Press has released new guidelines for handling the citation of journal articles published electronically and that are paginated individually rather than being grouped together in a pagination series.

An example of the format they're wanting is included in the post linked to above. Based on this, the structure they seem to be wanting is:

[Author name], “[Title],” [Journal] [Journal volume] ([Journal volume year]): art. [Article number in the journal volume], [“p.” or “pp.” according to whether one or multiple pages is cited] [Page number or range cited], [Full DOI URL as a live link].

The format for subsequent citations would then be:

[Author surname], “[Short title],” [Page number or range cited].

The bibliography entry would then be:

[Author name with surname first]. “[Title].” [Journal] [Journal volume] ([Journal volume year]): art. [Article number in the journal volume], [“p.” or “pp.” according to whether the full article has one or multiple pages] [Page number or range for the full article]. [Full DOI URL as a live link].

The best current idea for handling this seems to be to put the article number in the "pages" field (HT: @bwiernik) and then add the page and DOI information during the citation process in the "suffix" field.

But, would it be possible for the style for the SBL Handbook to be updated to accommodate this guidance?

Thanks so much!

adamsmith

How would we distinguish these articles from "regular" articles on the Zotero/CSL end of things?

bwiernik

@adamsmtih Could we adopt CSL `number` as referring to the article number for article-* items?

@dstark Does SBL now want the DOI generally for all articles or only for this sort of electronic-only items?

dstark

@bwiernik, no, so far as I'm aware, SBL style still calls for including the DOI only when, per the press's post, "online journals that lack a print counterpart or are paginated differently than the print edition." Electronic journals whose pagination is consistent with a print counterpart would still follow the "regular" article format.

So, @adamsmith, one thought I had was whether it might be possible to have the SBL style trigger the "individually paginated" structure if the DOI field is populated but then use the "regular" structure if it's empty. There may be a better solution, but that would be something distinctive about this type of citation that could trigger the different note and bibliography structure (?).

adamsmith

Unfortunately, the DOI solution doesn't work because almost all recent articles imported -- including those with print counterparts -- will have and import with DOIs and users shouldn't delete those as they're strongly encouraged in Chicago Style and required in other styles like APA.

Using Number for article number is probably a good idea, but we have never considered that before and it might have undesirable side-effect; we'd have to check on that.

dstark

Okay, thanks so much @adamsmith.

bwiernik

I’d suggest we explore whether using number with article-* items is likely to raise issues across styles.

bwiernik

@adamsmith In most cases in existing styles, styles only print `number` within a conditional that tests for type. In the small number of styles I'm seeing that print `number` unconditionally, they would already produce incorrect output in some cases (e.g., `number` would be printed twice for legislation in http://www.zotero.org/styles/advances-in-alzheimers-disease). I think we could probably safely adopt `number` for article number.

dstark

This citation format is now addressed in the style as of this update.

haraldaa

Thank you for this update.
I have tried to put the following into the pages field: art. #4590, pp. 1-7 and then enters just the relevant page number (e.g. 3) when referring to a particular page. It works correctly for the footnote reference, but the bibliography shows preprint #4590, pp. 1–7. I am using this style: society-of-biblical-literature-fullnote-bibliography.csl dated 2022-09-27. Am I doing something wrong when entering the data?

Edit. Tested again. Now it works when using Word, but it does not show correctly in the ZoteroPreview Add-on. Should have tested better before posting, sorry!

adamsmith

I'm glad (though a bit surprised) this works, but to be clear, the way to enter the data would be to add
Number: #4905
into the Extra field.

haraldaa

Entered what you suggested in the Extra field and the page range "1-7" in the Pages field, works as expected now in the ZoteroPreview add-on and in Word as well. Thanks for clarifying. Now I can update the wrong records :)

dstark

Thanks, @adamsmith, though @haraldaa, SBL style wouldn't want the "#" portion. They're calling for just "art. 4590" in your example. So this would equate to "number: 4905" in Extra. Glad to hear you're finding this additional accommodation in the style helpful!

haraldaa

Thanks for reminding me. I should have checked the sblhs2.com site myself for the updated guidelines. I would also like to thank you for the efforts made to improve the style, really appreciate it!