Newly added style not showing up in Zotero Style Preview

dr.jackalope

Greetings,

I recently added a new style in Zotero (Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology, Elsevier). When I insert in-text citations in Word (latest version), citations by the same author are ordered from newest to oldest. For example, (McClintock 1984, 1953). I would like the citations to be in chronological order, but Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology does not appear in the list in the Zotero Style Preview. Only default styles are included in the list. I would like to edit this style so that in-text citations appear in chronological order but can not figure out how. I am using the most current version of Zotero.

Any insight would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance!

damnation

It's a bit confusing. Is the issue that you cannot see the style or that you see the style, but it's not ordering correctly?

Anyway, Porgress in Bioph... is just a dependent style of this: http://www.zotero.org/styles/elsevier-harvard

Can you get that installed and listed in the styles?
If you cannot get any other style installed, please let us know more details. What steps are you taking, where are you clicking, is there any messages/errors etc.

dr.jackalope

Thanks for the prompt response! I see the style when working in word, but can't figure out how to edit it so that the in-text citations appear in chronological order. When I go to Edit>Preferences in Zotero, I can't edit the style. There has to be a way to edit the style. I've never seen any reference style use reverse chronological order for in-text citations, so I assume that its a glitch.

What is the best way to add, preview, and edit styles?

I see the Elsevier-Harvard style in the list, but am not able to preview it to see the details of the style. I will change the style preference in the Word doc to see if it is correct. The journal does not seem to have a preference for reference format, but does provide an example.

Thanks!
Jenn

dr.jackalope

p.s. I just changed the style in the Word doc and the references are still in reverse chronological order in the in-text citation, as well as in the reference list.

McClintock, B., 1984. The significance of responses of the genome to challenge. Science 226, 792–801. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.15739260
McClintock, B., 1953. Induction of Instability at Selected Loci in Maize. Genetics 38, 579–599.

I've been using Zotero for a while now and have never had this happen.

damnation

Ah, ok. Getting closer to the actual problem.

As a dependent style you cannot edit it. You need to edit the so-called "parent" style, which I mentioned above, is the elsevier-harvard.csl style.

See here for instructions: https://www.zotero.org/support/dev/citation_styles/style_editing_step-by-step

You need to change a few more things (title, ID, self-link) otherwise it will never show up in the list. ;)

I'd suggest:
1. go here: https://editor.citationstyles.org/searchByName/
2. search for the elsevier harvard style
3. click on edit
4. edit what you need
5. download the style (visual editor), copy paste the style code in a copy of the original .csl file (if using the code editor)

dr.jackalope

OK, let me try your suggestions and report back. Thanks so much!

dr.jackalope

Ok, sorry to be so dense about this, but I do not see where to edit the order of in-text citations in the Visual CSL Editor (step 4 in the aforementioned list).

dr.jackalope

Perhaps under In-line citations >>>>Date>variable>(change from "issued" to "original-date")?

damnation

yes, you're on the right track.
You need to move "Sort by issued" into the first position.

dr.jackalope

Thank you. It worked for in-text citations but the references are still listed from newest to oldest. I'll go back in and see if I can figure out where the glitch is. I can't believe this is even a thing. I've edited nearly 800 papers at this point, bound for a wide variety of journals, and have never seen the references listed in reverse chronological order. Could this be a glitch?

dr.jackalope

Finally got it. Sort by issue under Inline citations and under bibliography were both "descending" instead of "ascending". I'm glad for the experience of fixing this issue, but it cost me approx. $300 today. Maybe I should reconsider Endnote. :-/

Thanks so much for your help!

adamsmith

This is based on this in the guide to authors:

Examples: 'as demonstrated (Allan, 2000a, 2000b, 1999; Allan and Jones, 1999)

While it's not unheard of, I agree it's fairly uncommon, and it doesn't actually appear like journals follow this rule: I'm seeing both descending and ascending order of date for in-text citations, but best I can tell it's pretty consistently ascending in the bibliography. This was switched based on user reports, so I'm pretty sure we'll get complaints whichever we do.

dr.jackalope

Yes, I see that in the guide to authors, which coincidentally states that citations should be ordered chronologically (which inherently means to follow the order in which they occurred) or alphabetically and then chronologically. However, if you look under the examples for the References section, references by the same authors are indeed listed chronologically (i.e., ascending):

Van der Geer, J., Hanraads, J.A.J., Lupton, R.A., 2010. The art of writing a scientific article. J. Sci. Commun. 163, 51–59. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.Sc.2010.00372.
Reference to a journal publication with an article number:
Van der Geer, J., Hanraads, J.A.J., Lupton, R.A., 2018. The art of writing a scientific article. Heliyon. 19, e00205. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2018.e00205.

I'd go with convention, which is undoubtedly ascending order (i.e,, chronological) and then maybe have a second option for descending order. In any case, thanks so much for your assistance. Much appreciated!

adamsmith

I saw that, but those are examples for different types of references, so they're not sorted one way or the other -- the next two examples down start with S and M, respectively.

FWIW, here's the PR on which this was discussed: https://github.com/citation-style-language/styles/issues/1454#issuecomment-83262351 including (confusing) guidance from Elsevier and the fact that the bibtex style is ascending.

I'll try to get the attention of someone at Elsevier and just have them fix the example or otherwise clarify: https://twitter.com/adam42smith/status/1307503654308663296

dr.jackalope

OK, yes. That was not a great example. Here is a paper from Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology that is pending publication: https://tinyurl.com/yy88xhrb titled, "Biophysics and the nonlinear dynamics instigated by a special
hormone" (in case the tiny url does not work).

If you scroll to the References section of the aforementioned paper, there are two papers by Peter et al. that are listed in ascending order (i.e., chronological order). The authors appear to be the same for both publications. Is there another obscure priority for sorting those two references other than chronologically??

Thanks for the github link. The wording in the author instructions for Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology/Elsevier is confusing because they explicitly use the word "chronological" in the guidelines: "Citations may be made directly (or parenthetically). Groups of references can be listed either first alphabetically, then chronologically, or vice versa.......List: References should be arranged first alphabetically and then further sorted chronologically if necessary."

If they wanted reverse-chronological order, those are the words they should use. I agree on all accounts that Elsevier has been consistently inconsistent and ambiguous when it comes to journal formatting guidelines. I run into this on a regular basis as a science editor and consultant.

Thanks for trying to get to the bottom of this! Interested to hear their response.