Multiple Citation numbering unpredictable, wrong
When I use the multiple citation option, I often end up with a strange numbering. I would assume it should number them in order of date, but it doesn't... most of the time. For example I put in three citations at the beginning of the text, and it listed them as (2, 1, 3) instead of (1-3). #2 was the earliest date, but why didn't it give that one #1? In the multiple citation tool I selected them in order of date of publication. If I start over from scratch it does it in a different (and still wrong) order! I am using Science magazine format, but this was also happening with the Nature format. This is driving me CRAZY!! Otherwise I love Zotero.
Here is the extra strange thing... when I do a "Zotero refresh" it changes the assignment order to 10,11,12, but lists them in the text as (10,12,11) instead of (10-12)!! And it will alternate back and forth between these two modes upon successive refreshes.
Any help getting this figured out is much appreciated as I am trying to submit this paper to Science in the next few days. Thanks!
10. Marchant, D.R. & Head III, J.W. Antarctic dry valleys: Microclimate zonation, variable geomorphic processes, and implications for assessing climate change on Mars. Icarus 192, 187-222 (2007).
11. Head, J.W. et al. Modification of the dichotomy boundary on Mars by Amazonian mid-latitude regional glaciation. Geophys. Res. Lett 33, 30–50 (2006).
12. Head, J.W. et al. Extensive valley glacier deposits in the northern mid-latitudes of Mars: Evidence for Late Amazonian obliquity-driven climate change. Earth and Planetary Science Letters 241, 663-671 (2006).
http://img368.imageshack.us/my.php?image=zotsia5.jpg
But clearly there's some work to do here.
One related question (Science style)... in the bibliography, the style puts the month as well as the year, but Science just wants the year, from what I can tell. Do I have to eliminate the months/days from the "Date" fields in all of the references, or is there a way to change what shows up? Year alone is selectable as a field in the multiple citation dialog box, but it's not a separate field in the reference section.
If you confirm your understanding of the Science guidelines, I can fix it in the style. Can you do that, perhaps with a link as well?
Note to Simon and/or Dan: I think that if a numeric style has the collapse set to true, it might be that you need to assume you need to sort the citation by its number? Otherwise, it seems not to make much sense.
Something else I have noticed is that it appears your style lists first author plus "et al." for papers with five authors, whereas they want that done for *more* than five authors. http://www.sciencemag.org/about/authors/prep/res/refs.dtl
However, I already submitted the paper so if they take it I'll find out what whether there is anything they want to change in the reference format. I can then let you know if it's different than how you already have it set up. Thanks again!
P.S. I found out that you first have to sort the citation according to the citation number before it can be collapsed, so I'm all good now.
I also observe inconsistent, erratic numbering for multiple citations. i.e.: (7, 14-17, 13).
At some point, it would be very nice to be able to add citations to a list of citations already in text and have them re-numbered correctly; as opposed, to re-entering from scratch.
This using the latest Science style, latest zotero (2.0b5), latest Firefox (3.0.11), using Word 2002 (SP2) on Win XP (SP2).
From the thread, it looks like Bruce offered to fix the Science style once someone confirmed the rule with a link or a quote from their guidelines, but that's not yet been posted. The right way to go about this would be to deal with publishers directly, of course, but we're not there yet.
If you post specific info on the requirement of the style, I'm sure someone will fix it up.
(1) Open a fresh document.
(2) Select a style that sorts citations (American Physics Society is one of these).
(3) Insert a citation, make it multiple, and add three references to it.
(4) Return to the document, and above the three-reference citation, insert a single citation to a fourth source.
(5) Edit the original citation, and add a reference to the same source cited in (4).
This will result in a numbered citation [2-4,1], which is incorrect. Another anomaly is that, at step (5), the "keep source sorted" checkbox above the multiple citations is missing. From the source code, it looks like the checkbox appears when the processor finds sort keys on the citation. If the sort keys are being lost, that would cause both problems (failure of checkbox to appear, and failure of citation to sort). The checkbox issue has also been reported here.
This seems to be associated with the CSL processor, and should go away when the new processor (currently undergoing testing and integration) is deployed.
I write my documents with an author-date style (like Harvard reference format 1). For publication, usually numbered styles are needed. But for expample when I switch to the Science style, numbering and collapsing is correct, but not necesserily the order of the numbers in the citation as mentioned above [37, 36] in stead of [36, 37].
The solution is to edit this citation and uncheck and check again the "keep sorted" checkbox.
As it is quite easy to resolve (but a pain to do it with every citation), maybe it is easy to integrate this resorting into the code?
I've been inserting the citation and then manually changing it to the example above.
Thanks again for your help!
I'm not sure exactly what you are looking for (no brackets around the citation or just change the commas?). Anyway, you could look for a style that already does what you want.
Zotero Style Repository
If there isn't one, you can fairly easily edit a style to do just about anything you could reasonably want it to do.
csl_simple_edits [Zotero Documentation]
In your text, write "Smith bla bla bla" and then insert the citation between Smith and the first bla - if you use the supress author it will show as (2009) so that you get "Smith (2009) bla bla"