What document type for technical reports?

References to these must show title, institution, date and issue number (edition, if you like). I can't see a document type that gives me these fields. Or is it possible to create new document types?
  • Click the 'new item' button, select 'more->report'. Does it lack any field that you need?
  • Yes, as far as I can see it lacks an issue number (or edition) field.
  • there is a report number field
  • Yes, but the report number is presumably a reference number, not an issue number. Anyway, I need both, and it can't be both.

    Look for example at the document "ESARR 3 Guidance to ATM Safety Regulators : Explanatory Material on ESARR 3 Requirements" at http://www.eurocontrol.int/src/public/standard_page/esarr3.html. The document number is "EAM 3/GUI 1" and the issue number (shown in the document as "edition") is "1.0". The issue number isn't necessarily purely numeric, by the way .

    Another problem with the "report" document type is that zotero doesn't seem to have any mapping for the "institution" field (at least, http://dev.zotero.org/csl_syntax_summary doesn't show one), so I can't include it in a reference. In the example above I could kludge it by putting the institution in the "author" field, but if I need to reference a technical paper by author /and/ institution -- common in engineering -- then I'd be out of luck.
  • edited February 26, 2008
    Look for example at the document "ESARR 3 Guidance to ATM Safety Regulators : Explanatory Material on ESARR 3 Requirements" at http://www.eurocontrol.int/src/public/standard_page/esarr3.html
    Can you post the formatted reference for this source on this forum? I'm not sure what kind of formatting you hope to accomplish here.
    Another problem with the "report" document type is that zotero doesn't seem to have any mapping for the "institution" field
    Report's "institution" is mapped to "publisher" in Zotero here (see line 830): https://www.zotero.org/trac/browser/extension/branches/1.0/system.sql
  • "ESARR 3 Guidance to ATM Safety Regulators. EUROCONTROL, Document EAM 3/GUI 1, Issue 1.0, 1st June 2001"

    I think the issue number field would have to include the whole text "Issue 1.0", because I might have to refer to a draft, such as "Draft 1.2".
  • edited February 26, 2008
    For the moment, I would put both the document number and the issue number in the Report Number field, separated by a comma--that will still work for your citation formatting example. It may be possible to add another field to Reports down the line (in FF3-compatible Zotero)--would "edition" or "version" be more appropriate?
  • I call it "version", but I'm not the entire community :-) EUROCONTROL uses "edition", probably because it's closer to the French...
  • I am unable to find any zotero format that correctly handles technical report entries. This is a pretty important class of documents. Most of mine are imported from bibtex and look a bit like these:
    http://www.cerfacs.fr/algor/reports/algo_reports_1994.html

    from which I'd like to see a bibliography entry that is some style based variation of

    "M. Bennani and T. Braconnier. Comparative behaviour of eigensolvers on highly nonnormal matrices. Technical Report TR/PA/94/23, CERFACS, Toulouse, France, 1994."

    (which was generated by running the first entry on the quoted web page through bibtex2html.)

    Importing into zotero then generating a bibliography entry returns:

    "M.~Bennani & T.~Braconnier, 1994. Comparative behaviour of eigensolvers on highly nonnormal matrices, Available at: http://www.cerfacs.fr/algor/reports/1994/TR_PA_94_23.ps.gz."

    Which might be all right for a web page but sucks if you are trying to write a serious paper. Can anyone give me a hint how I might fix this so I don't have to go in an edit my bibliographies manually?

    Thanks
  • Identify the style you need modified.
  • edited May 12, 2008
    IEEE would do the job as I am mostly doing technical writing and I notice the harvard style (the other I would typically tdurn to for author-date citation) doesn't make explicit mention of technical reports (its bibtex implementation does).

    I noted in this thread http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/536/7/what-other-citation-formats-would-you-like-zotero-to-generate/#Item_5 that the required formating is described on page 7 of the IEEE style manual.

    I should mention that part of the problem appears to be the failure of zotero's bibtex import to transfer the "institution" field; however the bibliographic entry doesn't include it even when entered manually.

    Thanks
  • I finally worked out how to hack the csl files... Here is a patch for the ieee style that reports the details of technical reports (and some other small mods). The base style is fairly simplistic so I can't guarantee there will not be cases where it misbehaves... but for me it seems good. This patch includes in the bibliography (sorry whitespace seems to be removed in post):

    1. report type and number
    2. month (short form) as well as year for book and chapter types
    3. only includes the URL if the type is webpage

    --- ieee-modified.csl Fri May 16 13:32:11 2008
    ***************
    *** 47,53 ****
    --- 47,56 ----
    <macro name="publisher">
    <text variable="publisher-place" suffix=": " prefix=" "/>
    <text variable="publisher" suffix=", "/>
    + <text variable="genre" prefix="" form="short"/>
    + <text variable="number" prefix=" " suffix=", " form="short"/>
    <date variable="issued">
    + <date-part name="month" suffix=". " form="short"/>
    <date-part name="year"/>
    </date>
    </macro>
    ***************
    *** 105,111 ****
    </group>
    </else>
    </choose>
    ! <text macro="access" prefix="; "/>
    </layout>
    </bibliography>
    </style>
    --- 108,118 ----
    </group>
    </else>
    </choose>
    ! <choose>
    ! <if type="webpage">
    ! <text macro="access" prefix="; "/>
    ! </if>
    ! </choose>
    </layout>
    </bibliography>
    </style>
  • Oh... and the following lines also prevent extra spacing between entries:

    <option name="et-al-min" value="4"/>
    <option name="et-al-use-first" value="1"/>
    <option name="second-field-align" value="true"/>
    + <option name="entry-spacing" value="0"/>
    + <option name="line-spacing" value="1"/>
    <layout suffix=".">
    <text variable="citation-number" prefix="[" suffix="]"/>
    <text macro="author" prefix=" " suffix=", "/>

    Now its starting to work for me :-)
  • edited May 16, 2008
    Looks good, except for the 'webpage' conditional. If I cite a report or an article that's published at a URL, are you saying that IEEE does not want that URL?

    Also, what happens if you remove that 'entry-spacing' option altogether?
  • The handling of URL's is the weakest bit I think. To be honest I'm not sure what is best to do here. But I do think that the traditional citation details are preferable for a printed form and that the URL should only appear when its needed. By default it is included too often for me. The problem is that URL's change from time to time, unless they contain unreadble database keys. I also use "internal" URLs in my bibtex for some documents and I don't want these stray URLs creeping into my bibliographies.

    If you remove the entry-spacing option altogether the bibliography generated by the word plugin has a blank line between each entry. It makes for an ugly bibliography. I found discussion of this in another thread.
  • BTW the IEEE style manual does explicitly talk about online sources from page 10.

    "C. On-Line Sources
    The guidelines for citing electronic information as offered here are in modified illustration of the adaptation by the International Standards Organization (ISO) documentation system and the American Psychological Association style."

    It might be possible to do something meaningful using substitutions in the CSL. Not for me at this time though I'm afraid.
  • edited May 16, 2008
    The handling of URL's is the weakest bit I think. To be honest I'm not sure what is best to do here. But I do think that the traditional citation details are preferable for a printed form and that the URL should only appear when its needed. By default it is included too often for me. The problem is that URL's change from time to time, unless they contain unreadble database keys. I also use "internal" URLs in my bibtex for some documents and I don't want these stray URLs creeping into my bibliographies.
    But just keep in mind the big picture here. Before very long, almost ALL cited documents will be web documents. So it seems rather anachronistic to be pretending that there's something special called a "webpage."
    If you remove the entry-spacing option altogether the bibliography generated by the word plugin has a blank line between each entry. It makes for an ugly bibliography.
    Yes, and I'd call that a bug. Zotero should NOT be inserting an extra space, and we probably ought to settle on what the default spacing ought to be if the option isn't present.
  • for more discussion on the extra space see here http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/2252/

    WRT every document being a web document I respectfully disagree... let me explain my perspective:

    Just because a document is made available on the net doesn't make it a web document. What is far more important is who the publishers are as that indicates the review process, context (conference vs journal etc) and the research community in which it circulated first. If you google a title you will often find a handful of web locations for the same document, but only the publishers web address would be deemed appropriate for inclusion in a citation (unless you are specifically referring to a pre-print). As a result this is adding no new information. It is just like saying "Available in the printed transactions at your library". (Wo... starting to rant there... please excuse)

    If there is no "formal" publisher then a web address (or in the bibtex world a "howpublished") becomes important. Alternatively, newspapers and such often maintain separate web versions that may be slightly different, making the distinction between printed and web versions important.

    I am feeling old-fashioned making this case but I feel this distinction is real and important (and I'm a pedant). IMHO citations should not be verbose for the sake of it but neither should they be lazy. Universally employing a URL facilitates both these errors as
    - if you include complete readable publisher info the URL is redundant
    - if you can't be bothered collecting all the publisher info the URL is in some sense sufficient as you can find out the other information

    Hope we can find some points of agreement. I'm so enjoying being able to finally bring some of the simplicity of latex/bibtex to word (in which I am forced to work).
  • We can happily agree to disagree here. Let me give you a practical example on exactly this issue: reports.

    If the UN publishes a report and it's available on the web (as it almost always is these days), then I think it bad form not to include the URL or (in an electronic document) a link to it.

    The purpose of citation information, after all, is to make it easy to find things, and there's nothing easier nor more direct than a link directly to the source.

    But even if I agree with you on this point, I guess I'd point out to you that you are explaining distinctions here not by type (webpage vs. journal article vs. book) but rather by the attribute/properties of those things: whether they have a publisher, for example.

    And, BTW, I'm not saying "universally include" the URL; I'm saying include it if present, and that (as has been discussed here many times) Zotero needs to do a better job of distinguishing (more-or-less canonical) URLs from links. E.g. redundant citation data is more of a data than a styling problem.
  • "The purpose of citation information, after all, is to make it easy to find things, and there's nothing easier nor more direct than a link directly to the source."

    The purpose of citation IMHO is threefold,
    1 to allow a future researcher to find the item
    2 to acknowledge the work of the author or source
    3 to provide legitimacy (via academic gate keeping - peer review, institutional legitimacy - etc) for any use you make of that author's work to provide verification for your own argumentative claims
    There may be more but I can't think of them.
    My point however is that all of these create slightly different but overlapping requirements of a citation instrument.
    The argument above appears to stem from a difference of opinion over the relative emphasis to put on point 1 or point 3
    JT
  • i need a line-spacing of 1.2, not 1 or 2. is there a way to accomplis that with csl? every atempt, neither 1.2 nor 1,2, worked right. Any ideas?
  • Hello,

    Is there any style including the report number in the citation style repository of zotero? I have the same need as Andre to have the report number included in the citation. Is his solution included in any style?

    Thank you very much
  • I'm also facing this question of how best to cite a technical report. I am using the Limnology and Oceanography style to submit to that journal.

    It seems there is no clear advise on the journal's webpage about technical reports. I feel that the report ID is necessary. I suppose I will add something like this to the CSL file.

    <else-if type="report">
    <group delimiter=" " suffix=".">
    <text macro="title" prefix=" " suffix=","/>
    <text macro="edition"/>
    <text macro="editor" suffix="."/>
    <text macro="genre" suffix=" "/>
    <text macro="number"/>
    </group>
    </else-if>

    Are there further posts on this issue that I might find useful?

    Thanks,
    Charlie
  • That looks fine wrt to the variables you're using.
    On a different note, though, you shouldn't have those spaces in the affixes - you're already getting a space between each variable bc. of the group delimiter.
  • Thanks. My previous post didn't work unless I set the value of the vairables rather than the macros (as andre had done). I don't quite understand what the difference is, but the following does now work.

    <else-if type="report " match="any">
    <group delimiter=" " suffix=".">
    <text macro="title" prefix=" " suffix="."/>
    <text variable="genre" prefix="" form="short"/>
    <text variable="number" prefix=" " form="short" suffix="."/>
    <text macro="edition"/>
    <text macro="number"/>
    <text macro="publisher"/>
    </group>
    </else-if>
  • well, the macros need to exist, i.e. be defined above, else it won't work.
    Again, though, don't put spaces in affixes when the group delimiter already has a space.
  • Thanks. So this will do the job better

    <else-if type="report " match="any">
    <group delimiter=" " suffix=".">
    <text macro="title" prefix=" " suffix="."/>
    <text variable="genre"/>
    <text variable="number" suffix="."/>
    <text macro="edition"/>
    <text macro="number"/>
    <text macro="publisher"/>
    </group>
    </else-if>

    Your link http://citationstyles.org/downloads/primer.html is very helpful in understanding how this all works.
  • that looks great. Please share the style when you're done:
    https://github.com/citation-style-language/styles/wiki/Submitting-Styles
  • I've done this. I've not used github before, so feel free to change things I've done wrong.

    https://github.com/citation-style-language/styles/pull/147
  • edited May 9, 2012
    Committed. Thanks carhogg.
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