Upgrade StorageInconsistent initials/first names and page numbers in citations
I know this issue has been discussed before, but I am not aware of any solution for it. I am using the "Harvard Reference Format 1" citation style, and even though all papers by a certain author have that author's name consistently formatted (after I have manually edited all occurrences to make them consistent!...), my in-text citations are not consistent with regard to how authors' names are displayed, e.g. somtimes I have (J. Smith, 2010), (John Smith, 2011) and (Smith, 2012) all appearing at different points in my document.
I know that Zotero 3.0.8 will bring batch processing of library items, which will probably make it easier to edit all occurrences of an author's name so that it is displayed in a consistent way, even if the different translators have led to inconsistent name fields. But until then, is there a way at least for my references to appear with just the initial?
Also, again probably depending on the trnaslator, some papers include page numbers as metadata, while others don't, which leads to the Bibliography looking inconsistent. Assuming I don't want to manually complete all missing page fields (or delete all existing ones), what can I do to make this information be consistent in my bibliography as well?
Many thanks for any help!
I know that Zotero 3.0.8 will bring batch processing of library items, which will probably make it easier to edit all occurrences of an author's name so that it is displayed in a consistent way, even if the different translators have led to inconsistent name fields. But until then, is there a way at least for my references to appear with just the initial?
Also, again probably depending on the trnaslator, some papers include page numbers as metadata, while others don't, which leads to the Bibliography looking inconsistent. Assuming I don't want to manually complete all missing page fields (or delete all existing ones), what can I do to make this information be consistent in my bibliography as well?
Many thanks for any help!
You could use a style such as Chicago author-date that will only use disambiguation where it's strictly necessary or you could use APA which will always use initials.
I don't see what to do about page numbers - if they're required in a citation style they're required. If you don't have them in Zotero you'll have to manually add them. It's really a bad idea not to clean-up your Zotero data (that applies to authors, too - you may very well run into different issues wrt bibliography sorting etc. if you don't clean-up author first names).
Sure, it's possible to code a citation style that doesn't print page numbers - since no publication I'm aware of actually wants that, though, I have no interest in doing it, but see here:
http://www.zotero.org/support/dev/citation_styles/style_editing_step-by-step
I think the items that have missing page numbers have probably been created after retrieving meta-data from a local PDF file, rather than being imported through a proper translator such as ScienceDirect. Is there at least a way to see at a glance which papers have missing page numbers, so that I don't have to browse each item's Info fields one by one?
and then add all other digits 1-9 to the conditions. Then create a saved search