There is only the one bug. It should be defaulting to by-cite, but it's using all-names instead. I'll check into it.

The disambiguation is not using initials because the sample data has "Kathleen A" and "Kathleen Ann", so it renders the full name to distinguish the two (despite only one appearing in a cite -- that's the all-names rule at work).

If the form of the name is aligned, you get (Hall and Thelen, 2009), with both the by-cite and the all-names rules.

It's fixed now. The tests were all passing, so I missed the fault (for a long time -- sorry for the frustration over this). It was initialised badly, which only seems to have caused problems when running in the client. You can run the new code using the patch plugin.

Thanks! Still doesn't look right for me in the test pane running the 1.0.86 version of the gadget, though.

The tests I built this morning must have been badly constructed. I've found the actual source of the bug now. Unfortunately it's going to be down the rabbit hole for me again on this one: fixing the problem has caused things to come unglued elsewhere.

When it's fixed and stable I'll post again, or write privately. But it may take several days to sort this out.

The fix is now available. To try it out, install this plugin. (All it does is to swap the revised citation processor for the one contained in Zotero. You can uninstall it when the next Zotero release comes out.)

The three last links are dead - they're missing a humans/ before the filename (I looked at them, though).

This all looks great to me. I'm confused about one of the tests:

https://bitbucket.org/bdarcus/citeproc-test/src/tip/processor-tests/humans/disambiguate_AndreaEg1b.txt?at=default

Smith, Brown & J. Jones (1980); Smith, Brown & J. Jones (1980)
Smith, Brown & J. Jones (1980); Smith, Benson, et al. (1980)
Smith, Brown & J. Jones (1980); Smith, Brown & A. Jones (1980)

I understand the third test, but neither why J. Jones is listed in the second (wouldn't Smith, Brown, et al. and Smith, Benson, et al. be sufficient?) nor why he's listed in both items in the first row - that doesn't seem to add anything - shouldn't those just be Smith et al. (1980)?

I'm probably missing something simple, but if you don't mind clearing this up for me?

Oops, thanks. Fixed those links.

The cites are rendered in pairs, but as if in a single document. The last cite is with A. Jones, so the others need to be expanded to distinguish it.

Will that fix work on a mac? if so, how do I use it?

And if not, is there anything else I can use to avoid changing all the citations by hand? I have about 3 days to figure this out before I have to do that.

Standalone.

First, thank so much for your speedy replies!

I tried everything you suggested. The plugin, as predicted, didn't really work.

I think I wasn't actually clear on the problem, and I'm not sure how to phrase it.

Here's an example of a citation I'm having trouble with. it's supposed to be in APA format.

(Benigas & Bourgeois, 2011; M S Bourgeois, Burgio, Schulz, Beach, & Palmer, 1997; M S Bourgeois, Schulz, & Burgio, 1996; M S Bourgeois, 1993; M. Bourgeois, 2006; Michelle Bourgeois, Fried-Oken, & Rowland, 2009; Michelle Bourgeois & Mason, 1996; Michelle S. Bourgeois, Dijkstra, Burgio, & Allen, 2004; Michelle S. Bourgeois, 1991; Michelle S Bourgeois et al., 2003; Michelle Bourgeois, 1990, 1992; Chang & Bourgeois, 2012; Dijkstra, Bourgeois, Burgio, & Allen, 2002; Hoerster, Hickey, & Bourgeois, 2001)

Initials with and without punctuation keep showing up, along with entire first names, which have absolutely no business being there at all. This has something to do, I guess, with having used the Zotero Chrome plugin to import the references in the first place.

Is the only way to have each citation look like "(Bourgeois, 2007)" or bibliography entries to be "Bourgeois, M." rather than "Bourgeois, Michelle S." to go in and change every one? Is there any way to standardize a given author's name?

(I hope that asks my question more clearly. I look forward to the new update and really enjoy using this program!)

Thanks! It's good to know I can just take care of it instead of forever wondering if there's another way.

I'll look into the Elsevier Harvard style as well.

@skl42,

As adamsmith says, this is an issue with the way names are recorded in your database. If names for the same person are recorded inconsistently, you will get the kind of output (with extra initials, etc) shown in your sample.

The problem comes from inconsistency in the original data. It doesn't matter what tool you use to fetch items; if publishers and aggregators provide a name in different forms, the difference will show up in your Zotero database, and needs to be fixed by hand. If you curate the records from time to time, it can save time in the long run.

no need for the document, no. What version of Zotero?

For a start upgrade to 4.0.8, though I don't think that will make a difference.
You'd have to provide some examples for us to see, but as we say above, you do need to manually adjust/unify author names for entirely correct citation behavior and there is really no way around that.

sorry, still confused. When I import that item and then cite it with the Emerald Journal style I get
(Hockley et al., 2011)
as an in text citation and

Hockley, C.J., Smith, J.C. and Lacey, L.J. (2011), “Contracting for Availability and Capability in the Defence Environment”, in Ng, I., Parry, G., Wild, P., McFarlane, D. and Tasker, P. (Eds.),Complex Engineering Service Systems, Decision Engineering, Springer London, pp. 237–256.

which looks good to me.
That said, there is no document, but as a general rule, Zotero simpifies referencing, it doesn't remove you from the task entirely. You do need to check that data imported in Zotero is correct, you should verify that citations created by Zotero conform to those required by the journal, and, as we say above, you need to check that your authors are imported in a unified form. This is true for all reference management software.