Unable to differentiate citations in Word

gauthamg
Hi

Given the following references (see bibtex text at the end) and the APA or Harvard citation styles, I am unable to differentiate b/w the some of the citations. When adding all four citations, I get the following for various styles:

APA
(Ely, Margolin, et al., 2001; Ely et al., 2001, 2001; Ely, Siegel, & Inouye, 2001)

Harvard Reference Format 1
(Ely, Margolin, et al. 2001; Ely et al. 2001; Ely et al. 2001; Ely et al. 2001)

Elsevier's Harvard Style
(Ely et al., 2001, 2001, 2001; Ely, Margolin, et al., 2001)

So, depending on the style, two or three of them can't be differentiated. Is there any way of fixing this?

Cheers
Gautham

<bibtex>
@article{ely_impact_2001,
title = {The impact of delirium in the intensive care unit on hospital length of stay},
volume = {27},
issn = {0342-4642},
url = {http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11797025},
doi = {10.1007/s00134-001-1132-2},
number = {12},
journal = {Intensive Care Medicine},
author = {Ely, E W and Gautam, S and Margolin, R and Francis, J and May, L and Speroff, T and Truman, B and Dittus, R and Bernard, R and Inouye, S K},
month = dec,
year = {2001},
note = {{PMID:} 11797025},
keywords = {Delirium, Female, Humans, {INTENSIVE} care units, Length of Stay, Linear Models, Male, Middle Aged, Multivariate Analysis, Prospective Studies, Risk Factors, Survival Rate, Treatment Outcome},
pages = {1892--1900}
},

@article{ely_delirium_2001,
title = {Delirium in Mechanically Ventilated Patients},
volume = {286},
url = {http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/286/21/2703.abstract},
doi = {10.1001/jama.286.21.2703},
number = {21},
journal = {{JAMA:} The Journal of the American Medical Association},
author = {Ely, E W and Inouye, Sharon K. and Bernard, Gordon R. and Gordon, Sharon and Francis, Joseph and May, Lisa and Truman, Brenda and Speroff, Theodore and Gautam, Shiva and Margolin, Richard and Hart, Robert P. and Dittus, Robert},
month = dec,
year = {2001},
pages = {2703 --2710}
},

@article{ely_evaluation_2001,
title = {Evaluation of delirium in critically ill patients: validation of the Confusion Assessment Method for the Intensive Care Unit {(CAM-ICU)}},
volume = {29},
issn = {0090-3493},
shorttitle = {Evaluation of delirium in critically ill patients},
url = {http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11445689},
number = {7},
journal = {Critical Care Medicine},
author = {Ely, E W and Margolin, R and Francis, J and May, L and Truman, B and Dittus, R and Speroff, T and Gautam, S and Bernard, G R and Inouye, S K},
month = jul,
year = {2001},
note = {{PMID:} 11445689},
keywords = {Aged, Delirium, Dementia, Female, Humans, {INTENSIVE} care units, Male, Middle Aged, Neuropsychological Tests, Observer Variation, Prospective Studies, Reference Standards, Reproducibility of Results, Respiration, Artificial, Sensitivity and Specificity},
pages = {1370--1379}
},

@article{ely_delirium_2001-1,
title = {Delirium in the intensive care unit: an under-recognized syndrome of organ dysfunction},
volume = {22},
issn = {1069-3424},
shorttitle = {Delirium in the intensive care unit},
url = {http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16088667},
doi = {10.1055/s-2001-13826},
number = {2},
journal = {Seminars in Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine},
author = {Ely, E W and Siegel, M D and Inouye, S K},
year = {2001},
note = {{PMID:} 16088667},
pages = {115--126}
}
</bibtex>
  • fbennett
    So, depending on the style, two or three of them can't be differentiated. Is there any way of fixing this?
    Not at your end. I can reproduce your results here in my dev version of Zotero, and the processor is clearly just getting it wrong. Apart from dropping names needed for disambiguation, it should be adding year-suffix discriminators to the collapsed cites, which it's not doing. I'm not sure how this could have snuck past the test suite; it contains disambiguation tests that use very similar input data. I'll check into it further and post back later in the day.
  • fbennett
    edited March 31, 2012
    This prompted a careful examination of the disambiguation module, with rewrites to some portions of the code. I was able to pick up an unrelated bug or two -- one of them was masked by incorrect result strings that I had recorded in the test suite, which I discovered when the corrected processor started failing on them. These were rare cases, but given the size of the processor's user population, they certainly must have bitten from time to time.

    I've checked in a processor revision that handles your sample correctly (version 1.0.315), along with every other cases reported to date (plus a few more besides). If all goes well it will feature in the next Zotero release.
  • gauthamg
    Great! Will the next release be out soon? Alternatively, is there any way of getting an early release? (Dissertation due on Thursday :) )
  • fbennett
    edited March 31, 2012
    If deadlines loom, be sure that you have all your data backed up, first and foremost.

    With that very serious and important caveat, you can use the new processor immediately via MLZ. Given your short time-frame, it would be exceptionally important to have a complete backup of your data before installing fresh software (even for a routine upgrade). Also, you should bear in mind that MLZ is not supported by the Zotero developers; the extensions it implements (or similar) are likely to be merged into official Zotero at some point, but at present the demands on developer time in the core project dictate that they cannot provide advice or support on code they don't maintain directly.

    If you have a current backup in hand, the MLZ client can be found on the CitationStylist site, under the Tools tab. It can be installed on a standard Zotero 3.0 database, and works just as Zotero does, but proceed with caution. :) If you don't need the multilingual extensions, you can reinstall official Zotero when the next version comes out.

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