Packaged Citation Styles

adamsmith
As you know, Zotero comes with a list of packaged citation styles - this list has never been updated and the upcoming release of Zotero 3.0 is a good opportunity to do that - the number of citation styles shouldn't change - maybe plus or minus 2 -
These are the current styles

o American Political Science Association
o American Psychological Association 6th Edition
o American Sociological Association
o Chicago Manual of Style (Author-Date format)
o Chicago Manual of Style (Full Note with Bibliography)
o Chicago Manual of Style (Note with Bibliography)
o Chicago Manual of Style (Note without Bibliography)
o Harvard Reference format 1 (Author-Date)
o IEEE
o Modern Humanities Research Association (Note with Bibliography)
o Modern Humanities Research Association (Note without Bibliography)
o Modern Language Association
o National Library of Medicine
o Nature Journal
o Vancouver

Of these, I think we should definitely take out NLM, MHRA (without Bibliography) and CMoS (Note w/o Bibliography), as they are all duplicates. I would also suggest taking out ASA because it's not very high quality, ASA doesn't supply great guidelines and they are in the process of updating the style.

So what to add? The criteria should probably be quality, relatively broad use (i.e. not just one journal), as well as a broad set of diffent-type and discipline style in the packaged styles.

Some candidates would be AAA, one of the law styles - Bluebook or McGill, Council of Science Editors, ABNT - to showcase some non-English style, Elsevier and Springer. Thoughts?
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  • RintzeRintze
    edited August 11, 2011
    I know that the number of dependent styles is not a good measure for style popularity, but here is a list of independent styles with their number of dependents:

    https://gist.github.com/1100122

    Maybe we could add an Elsevier style or two? And perhaps PLoS, because they're a high profile open access publisher?
  • dtjohnso
    Would including Turabian be too redundant given that Chicago is in the list? I've been using the Turabian styles for the last few years and have very rarely had issues with them, so I think the quality may be up to par (perhaps needing a little bit of tweaking, not really sure). I don't really know how broadly it is used compared to Chicago either.
  • dstillman
    Turabian Author-Date is just a dependent style pointing to Chicago Author-Date.
  • adamsmith
    But the typical, note based Turabian has a couple of differences and is very popular as a requirement for undergrads, so that might be a good idea.
  • Bionatsci
    In the biological sciences in the UK the most popular style for undergrads/postgrads is the Cell Journal style (it has been used at every department I have ever studied/worked in), so it might be worth including that one.
  • ChristianR
    edited August 24, 2011
    It is a good idea to limit the packaged styles. For better usability please add also the possibility to filter/sort the styles in the Zotero/Options (e.g. by date, language, Format, Fields). Date & language would be wonderful also on zotero.org/styles/ - language especially for all non-english-styles-users, as english-styles are very dominant. Thank you for your optimizing work.
  • adamsmith
    OK, thanks for the input. I'd suggest maybe just using Elsevier's Harvard instead of the Harvard 1 style, which is kind of a random choice.
    So let's see:

    o ABNT
    o American Anthropological Association
    o American Political Science Association
    o American Psychological Association 6th Edition
    o Bluebook 19th Edition
    o Chicago Manual of Style (Author-Date format)
    o Chicago Manual of Style (Full Note with Bibliography)
    o Chicago Manual of Style (Note with Bibliography)
    o Cell Journal
    o Elsevier's Harvard (Author-Date)
    o IEEE
    o Modern Humanities Research Association (Note with Bibliography)
    o Modern Language Association
    o Nature Journal
    o PLoS
    o Vancouver

    That's 8 author-date styles, 4 note-based styles, and 4 numerical styles.
    Of this list I'd probably say APSA and one of the Chicagos (either author-date or note w Bib) would be my first choices for striking. Thoughts?

    (@Christian - sorting is an entirely separate topic, though I agree with your point)
  • RintzeRintze
    Maybe we should leave out the PLoS style. I was planning to make the style a bit more comprehensive, so I contacted them, but they aren't able to supply any guidance beyond the meager selection of formatted example offered online (I guess they don't want people to cite patents and other such unworldly materials).
  • mark
    edited September 1, 2011
    Of the Chicago styles, one of the Note with Bib styles could go I guess.

    Also, AAA is an interesting style, but I wonder if it is really so commonly used as to warrant inclusion in this list.
  • adamsmith
    OK, I liked the idea of PLoS, but I guess that's not to be then.
    I'd like AAA in the list for three reasons:
    1. AAA is the only association that ever lobbied to get it's citation style included in the default list _and_ which paid (me, ahem) for its creation (the two are independent of each other - I'm not getting a bonus for inclusion ;-)
    2. The style is high quality and based on a comprehensive style guide.
    3. The style showcases complex Zotero/csl formatting abilities that most other ref managers don't have, and while AAA may only be a somewhat common style, there are a good number of styles that follow similar formatting, i.e. authors as a kind of headline to their works.
  • RintzeRintze
    I would drop ABNT. It's awkward to have a Portuguese style at the top of the default list of installed styles.
  • adamsmith
    I personally would really like to keep one non-English style and ABNT wouldn't actually be in first place - the style is named:
    Associação Brasileira de Normas Técnicas (ABNT)
    so it would be number four.
  • gaiasdelights
    I though Zotero included AMA style. Does it not?
  • adamsmith
    ah yes - I think you're right. I'd say that including Vancouver is enough - obviously people can still install AMA from the repository.
  • dstillman
    Elsevier's Harvard (Author-Date)
    Is that elsevier-harvard or elsevier-harvard-without-titles?

    (Also, the H needs to be capitalized in the <title> in those.)
  • adamsmith
    that's elsevier-harvard (i.e. the one with titles).
    I've fixed the capitals
  • dstillman
    Chicago Manual of Style (Note with Bibliography)
    We previously used chicago-note (w/o bib) as the default in Zotero. Is chicago-note-bibliography equivalent to that as long as you don't generate a bibliography? If so, can we rename one of these (whichever we think is more popular) to just "Chicago Manual of Style (Note)" and make the old one (which we'll no longer bundle) a dependent style based on that? Is there any advantage to having both?
  • adamsmith
    We previously used chicago-note (w/o bib) as the default in Zotero. Is chicago-note-bibliography equivalent to that as long as you don't generate a bibliography?
    yes.
    If so, can we rename one of these (whichever we think is more popular) to just "Chicago Manual of Style (Note)" and make the old one (which we'll no longer bundle) a dependent style based on that?
    Yes.
    The independent style will be chicago-note-bibliography
    I'm not sure how we'd call the other style: "w/o bibliography" seems odd when the style does have, in fact, a bibliography function. I'd just remove it, but that's a problem for legacy reasons, right?
    Is there any advantage to having both?
    no. I've never understood what the idea of the w/o bibliography versions of CMoS and MHRA were (and Elena has, I believe, said the same in the past).
  • dstillman
    I'd just remove it, but that's a problem for legacy reasons, right?
    Yeah, that was my concern, but we actually handle this better than we used to and prompt people to select a new style when they use a document that uses a missing style. So I think deleting it is fine. We can add something to the client to delete chicago-note on upgrade so that people aren't stuck with an outdated style when we add style auto-upgrading.
  • adamsmith
    yeah - but given the additional hassle that introduces for people (i.e. having to pick a new style in a document, maybe unsure which one to pick) I think (unless I'm misunderstanding something) going with the dependent style version and just calling it "legacy" or so is preferable.
    There are 1300 dependent styles on the repository - if one of them has an odd name that seems to be a small price for a smoother user experience.
  • dstillman
    edited November 4, 2011
    Well, there are two separate issues: what we do in the repository and what we do in Zotero.

    It probably makes sense to leave it in the repository as a dependent to avoid affecting other clients.

    In Zotero we can do whatever we want, including hard-coding a mapping between the old URI and the new one so that people with chicago-note documents don't see that error. Since we were bundling both of these, it might be worth our deleting the old one in clients and adding the mapping so that all existing Zotero users out there don't have multiple confusing choices in their styles lists.
  • adamsmith
    OK, cleaned that up on the repository
    https://github.com/citation-style-language/styles/commit/3cd70db299494f29a28020b77c47095ae83b44a8
  • RintzeRintze
    Would it also be possible to rename "mhra_note_without_bibliography.csl" to use hyphens?
  • janew22
    how about citations for genealogy?
  • RintzeRintze
    Genealogy styles strike me as being rather specialized, and I don't think including a genealogy style would be very useful to the average Zotero user.
  • janew22
    you would be surprised at the number of genealogists who use this program - we talk about it all the time
  • adamsmith
    also, there is no genealogy style for Zotero.
    My understanding is that the style used by most genealogists - based on that book you guys treat like the bible (forgot the title/author - is it ESM?) - is essentially Chicago Manual of Style, which, of course, is included in Zotero.
  • ChristianR
    I use Zotero mainly for genealogy/history with my own (german) style based on CMoS.
    @janew22: I searched zotero.org/styles but found no genealogy styles (only anthropology and social_science). Maybe you mean a style should be created (e.g. like the progenealogists.com/citationguide.htm)? Please open a new thread our give a link to your group of genealogists.
  • Melissajeanne
    I just posted a request for genealogy style in the forum, before I saw this dicussion.

    The standard for genealogy citation is by Elizabeth Shown Mills, and called "Evidence Explained - Citing History Sources from Artifacts to Cyberspace".

    Inserting the footnotes and bibliography (using Word) is a big plus to genealogy researchers.
  • DWL-SDCA
    edited January 1, 2012
    Several years ago Elizabeth S. Mills vigorously objected to an automated output of references in her citation style when it was incorporated into a popular genealogy records program -- The Master Genealogist (TMG). The issue was resolved satisfactorily. However, I strongly recommend that she be consulted. I seem to remember that there was talk of a lawsuit against the developers because of a possible loss of sales of her style guide book. (If a software package automatically created reports that used her style, the users didn't need to buy the book.) As I remember, she also objected that the style as output by TMG did not precisely follow her standard. If I remember correctly, after a great deal of fuss, she became actively and cooperatively involved in making certain that the reports output by TMG followed her style exactly.

    An interesting (to me) question arises about the intellectual property rights of those who develop a style guide.
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