Adding text to the beginning/end of a reference?

SimonSchwarzwald

Hi everyone,

I failed at googleing my issue and therefore registered here. I'm neither a native speaker nor do I have any experience with citation tool other than using zoteros standard functionalities for everyday purposes. Sorry, if the answer was actually easy to find ;)


So, I would like to add certain comments to my references that will be displayed in the final document. The positions would need to be at the beginning and/or at the end of the reference:

[1] For a recent review see: xxx and references therein
[2] For the conversion formula, see xxx


Thanks in advance!

dstillman

See Prefix/Suffix:

https://www.zotero.org/support/word_processor_plugin_usage#customizing_cites

adamsmith

But judging by the sample citations, those are actually entries in a numerical bibliography -- like IEEE style? We see prefixes for those sometimes in published bibliographies, but they're systematically a bit of nonsense (since you can refer to the same number multiple times throughout the text) and Zotero/CSL don't support them

SimonSchwarzwald

Thanks for you answers.
I didn't mean to add the text into the reference itself (if I wanted it there, I'd just type it using word - sorry, that was missleading) but rather wanted the extra text to show off in the reference list at the end of the manuscript.

@adamsmith
Yes, IEEE style. So it's not possible to add those prefixes (which I don't at all think are nonsense if used correctly) using Zotero?


The workaround for my master thesis was to first generate the reference list, copy the text and then replace the automated list by the text, which could then be edited. But that's... kinda lame.

adamsmith

Correct, not possible.

My point is not that the notes themselves are nonsense (I assume you know what you're writing), but that the practice of using them conflates to very different things - endnotes and reference list entries which causes all sorts of logistical problems when automating citations.

I don't see us adding support for this in CSL (and thus likely Zotero).

bwiernik

Citation indexers like Google Scholar and Web of Science also discourage such annotations in the bibliographies because they interfere with automated citation indexing.

SimonSchwarzwald

So when a journal asks/encourages to do so, we should tell them, Google Scholar said no?

I get that the system can be an issue for automated indexing. I also understand concerns like adamsmiths, people might acidentaly refer to the same reference twice, rendering the annotations confusing at best. These comments indeed should only be used sparingly - but if used correctly, they can be great.

Maybe it just has to do with how (un)common these extra comments are in ones research field. For me personally, it would be nice to have the option. And if you say, the feature isn't needed by the maiority of users, that's totally understandable. But besides all technical issues, I don't think it should be questioned if they can be useful or not.