Consistency number of authors

andresqp
I have been having some problems with the number of authors that is cited in the main text of a manuscript. I am using the citation style called "evolutionary biology" which resembles closely to the one I need (Evolution & human behaviour). The problem that I have is that papers that have more than three authors are not cited consistently along the text. Sometimes they are cited with all tha author's names other times they are cited with just the last name of the first author followed by et al. The later is the way I actually need it. However, the more important issue is to get the same paper cited equally along the text. Can somebody give me a hint on how to do this?
  • aurimas
    My first question would be why aren't you using the "Evolution and Human Behavior" style from http://www.zotero.org/styles which is actually just APA? (Though maybe it's because it may have been added recently)

    The style you're using is actually the Springer SocPsych (author-date) style which has various rules for number of authors that are displayed:

    1. On first occurence of citation, show up to 5 authors. Subsequent occurences, show up to 2.

    2. If two different citations would otherwise appear the same (e.g. same first 3 authors and year) add more authors to disambiguate.

    It's probably the first rule that you're referring to, but as I say above, you should just use the correct style. If that style is actually not right, then let us know and we'll fix it.
  • andresqp
    Wow that's embarasing! You are totally right. The style was added recently, and that's why I had not found it before. However, the right style behaves exactly like the one I had before. The first citation of multiple authored papers shows all the authors, later just the first. This is not stated in the instruction for authors in the journal. And as far as I have seen in the published papers is not the case either. So, the issue remains in the right style. Could you check it out?
    Thanks for your response!
  • aurimas
    You're right, the instructions for authors do not mention anything about first and subsequent citations. Looks like this style is meant to be _similar_ to APA, but it does vary. We'll fix this soon, but in the mean time you can keep using whatever you're using now. We'll let you know when it's been updated.

    @adamsmith, any idea if something like that already exists? From a quick glance, it's very similar to apa-no-doi-no-issue except for what's mentioned above and the volume is not italicized.
  • adamsmith
    while they don't specify this correctly in the guide, they actually are following regular APA rules (i.e. different et al rules for first and subsequent citations) in the journal itself.
    See e.g. the
    Voudouris, Peck, & Coleman, 1989
    reference, which is given in full on p. 10 and then as
    Voudouris et al., 1989
    on p. 14.
    here:
    http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1090513812000700
    This may have changed recently, Elsevier is in the process of standardizing the styles used in their journals.
  • andresqp
    Thanks, that's a good piece of info!

This is an old discussion that has not been active in a long time. Before commenting here, you should strongly consider starting a new discussion instead. If you think the content of this discussion is still relevant, you can link to it from your new discussion.

Sign In or Register to comment.