APA citation of journal article with ID but no proper page number(s)

scottseagroves

Hi! Let me show you an example, say this article. The Zotero connector imports it just fine. The resulting bib entry in APA 7 is:
Chi, V. H.-I., & Kadandale, P. (2022). All groups are not created equal: Class-based learning communities enhance exam performance and reduce gaps. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 21(3), ar52. https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.21-09-0240

Personally I think that's fine, the article ID plays the role of the page number. But according to the APA, it should really be:
Chi, V. H.-I., & Kadandale, P. (2022). All groups are not created equal: Class-based learning communities enhance exam performance and reduce gaps. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 21(3), Article ar52. https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.21-09-0240

(boldface added just to highlight, not for APA style)
I've noticed that if I catch this at import time, I can write "Article" before the ID in the "pages" field. But is there some way Zotero could do this automatically? Are there journals that use letters for "normal" page numbers, or does the presence of a letter signify an article ID?

Thanks -

adamsmith

It's unfortunate for APA to make that distinction. Apparently, even APA journals don't consistently follow it, so my primary suggestion would be to just ignore the rule.
If that's not an option, using "number: ar52" in the Extra field for a journal article is a proper solution (that doesn't break other citation styles as putting "Article" in the page field does). I don't think we can automate this securely enough, I'm afraid, no.

scottseagroves

Thanks for the response, and I wonder if just ignoring this is best; as you say some journals don't follow it.

But if I did try your technique, can you say more? I put "number: ar52" in Extra and nothing changed.

adamsmith

sorry, that does require removing ar52 from the Pages field, I misremembered how we set this up. @bwiernik did we ever discuss this? Wouldn't it be more robust if people can leave this in pages for all the other styles?

bwiernik

Currently the style is set to print number only if there is no page. On reflection, I agree @adamsmith that swapping the order of that check would make for more robust behavior with other styles. I’ll make that change

scottseagroves

@bwiernik I just wanted to bump this to ask if this is an easy thing for you to do?

adamsmith

We'll definitely do this and I don't think it'll take very long until it's up (like 1-3 weeks)