Style Request: [Cite Them Right-Harvard]

Hi,
Thanks for all your work on this great software.
The university I work for has decided to use the Harvard style set out in a book called Cite Them Right. (Of course it's a bit annoying that another new style is created...) The university have had a go at creating an Endnote style (which didn't appear to be correct to me, and doesn't function in Zotero) but there isn't a .csl file, which is difficult!

The most similar style I've found is the Open University Harvard Reference style.

I've managed to change it a little so it functions to some extent, but I'm getting stuck...

Some differences I've noticed and have managed to change:
[online] should be [Online]
Should use et al. in citations if there are 3 or more authors.
Should give all authors in bibliography.
Title (if not in journal) should be in italics.
In a journal title should be in 'title' and the journal title in italics.
Don't think it specifies an order for multiple citations-I've put a sort in.
Should read 'Available at: ' not 'Available from:'

Ones I'm struggling with (may be others...):
Should use p. and pp. in citations.
Should say 'no date' rather than n.d.

Other parts of the style (were OK):
No initials in citations.
Initials in bibliography.
(2010a) type disambiguation.

I'm not a csl expert, and would be very grateful of any help, or ideally for an expert to produce the style. There may well be other changes needed, but it would then work for journal articles, books and web pages at least.

The ref for the book is:
Pears, R. and Shields, G. (2010) Cite them right: the essential referencing guide, 8th ed. Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.

Thanks in advance for any help, I hope I've supplied enough info for a start. I can send my file if that's helpful if you tell me how.
A
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  • and there is no online version of the style guide? I cannot understand why a university would do a thing like that.
    Anyway, this isn't enough for me to go by, I would need, at a minimum, examples for everything you mention.
  • edited September 8, 2011
    There is no single "Cite Them Right" style. The authors include a modified Harvard style and purport to present, "sections on referencing styles recommended by the American Psychological Association (APA), Modern Language Association (MLA), Modern Humanities Research Association (MHRA) and legal citations using the OSCOLA style". However, when I glanced through this a couple of years ago, it was immediately clear that what the authors presented as APA, MLA, etc. styles were their own interpretations of the standards.

    Although there is a fair section on plagiarism issues, I couldn't figure out the purpose of this book. I can't figure out why any university would choose to require its students to use a special flavor of a standard that violates the standard's guidelines. Although it seems that the authors see value in doing all the reference work by hand; there is a plug-in available that works with some versions of Word for Windows.

    The book has its own webpage:

    http://www.citethemright.co.uk/

    However, it merely consists of a few promotional pages. Only one of the pages provides an style example.
  • We now have Harvard - Cite Them Right
  • The "Cite Them Right" style does not cite series correctly. For example, currently I get:

    Moravcsik, A. (1998) [i]The Choice for Europe: Social Purpose and State Power from Messina to Maastricht, Cornell studies in political economy[/i]. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

    According to the book linked to above (9th edition, 2013, p. 16) the series should be added in brackets after the publisher. Hence:

    Moravcsik, A. (1998) [i]The Choice for Europe: Social Purpose and State Power from Messina to Maastricht[/i]. Ithaca: Cornell University Press (Cornell studies in political economy).

    If applicable, the volume number would be added after a simple coma. Hence - if the above book had volume number 3 within the series - the correct citation would become:

    Moravcsik, A. (1998) [i]The Choice for Europe: Social Purpose and State Power from Messina to Maastricht[/i]. Ithaca: Cornell University Press (Cornell studies in political economy, 3).

    Maybe someone has time to fix this?
  • I'll take a look, won't be super quick.
    I'd rather they didn't include series info at all - who actually cares...
  • I personally don't mind if it takes longer. As far as I am concerned, feel free to put it towards the bottom of the to-do list. Still, THANK YOU so much for your help!!! (with this as with any other issue ;)

    Off-topic: I am actually quite unsure how to deal with series info myself in my PhD. I cannot find any good advice anywhere. For some time I have simply deleted the information from Zotero, so that half of my library probably misses series information now. I guess for reasons of consistency and for agreeing with your argument (who cares!?) I will delete the series info in the other half of my library as well. Still, if somebody wants to include this information and does use "Cite Them Right", I guess it makes sense to - sooner or later - update this point.

    Sorry for this extensive old-year message. And now HAPPY NEW YEAR, Mr Smith! :)
  • happy new year to you. FWIW, I'm in the same discipline as you are and I've never seen series cited - so I either use a citation style that doesn't or do indeed remove that info from Zotero (which in all other cases I don't recommend doing - throwing out information = bad - but I really don't care about book series)
  • The style is now fixed. The updated version will appear on the repository within 30mins (check the timestamp). Update your copy of the style by clicking "Update Now" in the General tab of the Zotero preferences.

    Styles also update automatically within 24hs for Zotero 4.0+
    In an existing document, you may have to switch to a different style and back for the changes to take effect once the style is updated.
    Any further problems please let us know & thanks for reporting
  • edited March 7, 2014
    Hi Adam,

    I'd like to thank you very much for working on this style, sorry it's taken so long to reply. There may be things that it doesn't do correctly still. I haven't tried it out that much yet. Some elements of the style aren't that clearly defined in the book, eg capitalisation of source titles isn't stated in writing-the book mainly works by examples not rules, it appears to say that if a web page has no date then the url should be used instead of the author, whether disambiguation is done alphabetically or based on citation order, the 9th edition appears to format editors names differently than all authors (full firstname and surname) etc, it now includes Downloaded: instead of Accessed: if it's onto the student's edevice (whatever that means), urls aren't given for journal articles because they often didn't work anyway outside of that login session, and there are lots of other descriptive words like illus. fig. diag etc or [Photograph] added for some types that can't be easily mapped from the available categories in referencing software as far as I can see... but this looks like a very helpful start.

    To reply to some of the questions/points:
    This style is becoming more popular in the UK, I think mainly because universities don't have to write descriptions and guidance themselves. A few have tried (not completely successfully) to make style files for other referencing software, but I haven't found any for Zotero. The book seems to favour manual referencing rather than software (I can't possibly think why that could be... ;-) ). There is now a subscription webpage that organisations can sign up to so students might not have to all individually buy the book, at least to see examples of format for a good selection of citation types.

    I haven't found other styles with detailed free online descriptions for diverse types of citation-can anyone suggest where there might be some?

    Thanks again. Being able to use software without having to adapt styles or do too much manual editing will be a big help.
  • edited March 7, 2014
    I haven't found other styles with detailed free online descriptions for diverse types of citation-can anyone suggest where there might be some?
    the two best freely available once are Citing Medicine: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK7282/ (numerical)
    and MHRA, which has both a notes and an author-date version:
    http://www.mhra.org.uk/Publications/Books/StyleGuide/index.html
    (the book is for sale, but also free to download as a PDF).

    There are also many available online sources that describe the most widely used author date style - the APA Manual - as well as the most widely used note style - the Chicago Manual of Style. The OWL at Purdue is probably the best known source: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/section/2/

    Both of these styles have the major advantage of actually being used in academic journals and books, so if you're going to teach students a form of referencing, you'd want to go with either of those.

    As for the problems you identify, I'd need the exact sample citations from the book to get them right.
  • edited September 19, 2014
    Small error:

    Zotero prints "ed.", but http://www.citethemrightonline.com/Basics/elements-that-you-may-need-to-include-in-your-references (paywall) calls for
    Edition is abbreviated to edn (to avoid confusion with the abbreviation ed. or eds for editor or editors), for example 3rd edn or Rev. edn. See Printed books for further examples.
  • The style is now fixed. The updated version will appear on the repository within 30mins (check the timestamp). Update your copy of the style by clicking "Update Now" in the General tab of the Zotero preferences.

    Styles also update automatically within 24hs for Zotero 4.0+
    In an existing document, you may have to switch to a different style and back for the changes to take effect once the style is updated.
    Any further problems please let us know & thanks for reporting
  • Thank you. Another small issue: When a newspaper article without an author is cited, the Cite Them Right textbook, 3rd ed. 2008, calls for:
    Where no author is given, use the following citation order:
    - Title of newspaper (in italics- capitalise first letter of each word in title, except for linking words such as and, of, the, for)
    - Year of publication (in round brackets)
    - Title of article (in single quotation marks)
    - Day and month
    - Page reference

    Example In-text citation:

    The article (The Times, 2008, p.7) reported ...

    Reference list:

    The Times (2008) 'Bank accounts', 14 June, p.7.

    Note: If you are citing several articles published in the same year use a, b, c, etc after the year, e.g.

    The Times (2008a) ...
  • I'm ready to push that fix, but is there any way you could confirm that's still in a most recent version of the guide (or the webpage). I believe we're up to the 9th edition now, so I'm not sure how much has changed in the last 6 years.
  • Yes, the 9th ed., 2013, p. 32, says exactly the same.
  • Thanks. Fix is up, same instructions as above.
  • Thank you! The title of the newspaper should appear in italics, though, both in the in-text citation and the reference list.
  • One more thing: "Report Type" and "Report Number" are missing from Zotero's output.

    Examples from Cite Them Right, 9th ed. 2013, p. 35:
    Harris, G. (2013) Focus group recommendations. Internal LGU report. Unpublished.
    p. 52:
    Department of Health (2004) Primary medical services allocations 2004/05. Health Service Circular HSC 2004/003. Available at: http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/Publicationsandstatistics/Lettersandcirculars/Healthservicecirculars/DH_4071269 (Accessed: 21 June 2013)
  • And in presentations, between title and URL etc., the following elements should appear (see Cite Them Right, 9th ed. 2013, p. 33; "Papers from conference proceedings published on the internet" being the closest to Zotero's presentation they have):

    Title of conference: subtitle (in italics). Location, Date [day month] of conference.
  • edited October 8, 2014
    There are also issues with date disambiguation and "no date".

    - It should be "no date" instead of "n.d." (Cite Them Right, 9th ed. 2013, pp. 6, 15, 32, 41)

    - When citing several undated items by the same author, no "a, b, c and so on" (p. 32) are added after the "no date", neither in the in-text citation nor in the reference list. (This is never show explicitly, but inserting a space seems necessary, so this should be "(Department of Health, no date a)", "(Department of Health, no date b)" and so on.)

    - In such cases, the "accessed date" of websites appears as "(Accessed: 8 October 2012a)", "(Accessed: 8 October 2012b)" and so on. (Which is not helpful of course, since the in-text citations are all "(Department of Health, n.d.)".)
  • In book sections with an author and a bookauthor, the latter is not rendered - which is particulary problematic if the two are not identical.

    Cite Them Right, 9th ed. 2013, does not explicitly cover such cases, but it seems clear that adopting their format for "Chapters/sections of edited books" (p. 25) would be the way to go, so the output would have to look like this:

    Franklin, A.W. (2012) ‘Management of the problem’, in Smith, S.M. The maltreatment of children. Lancaster: MTP, pp. 83–95.
  • Thanks--I'm keeping track of all of these, so keep adding if you find more. I hope to get to this soon, but am a bit more swamped than I'd like.
  • Great, looking forward. – One more detail: "et al." needs to be italicized (Pears and Shields, 2013, p. 5).

    Pears, R. and Shields, G. (2013) Cite them right: the essential referencing guide. 9th edn. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
  • edited November 10, 2014
    And for magazine articles, day and month should be included, just as for newspaper articles.

    EDIT: Same for blog posts.
  • OK, I think I've covered this all fixes just went up, instructions same as above. To summarize

    - newspaper & magazine titles in italics also when they're used in the place of authors
    - "no date" instead of n.d. and disambiguation letters after no date (instead of behind access date)
    - day and month for magazines, blogs, and presentations.
    - et al in italics
    - presentations now include conference, location, and day month as per above
    - reports now include report type and report number
    - book authors are now listed for book sections.

    It would be helpful if you could have a look to see how translators should be handled, both for books and for book sections. I dont' think we currently handle them at all.

    Hope I didn't miss anything - let me know.
  • Great, thank you.

    I just noticed that in a presentation entry there should be a comma rather than a full stop between event and place (see example in CTR9, p. 34):

    Mendes, L. and Romão, T. (2001) ’Children as teachers’, Proceedings of the 8th international conference on advances in computer entertainment technology, Lisbon, Portugal, 8–11 November. doi: 10.1145/2071423.2071438.
    In entries with authors and editors where editor(s) come after the title, the format is not right yet (currently rendered as "Andrew N. Pollak, Bob Fellows and Mark Woolcock (eds)"). The correct format (CTR9, p. 22) is:
    Caroline, N. L. (2007) Nancy Caroline’s emergency care in the streets. 6th edn. Edited by Andrew N. Pollak, Bob Fellows and Mark Woolcock. Sudbury, Mass.: Jones and Bartlett.
    Also note the full stop between "edn" and the editor(s); currently Zotero renders a comma.

    There’s nothing in CTR9 on book sections with translators.
    Since translators would most likely be translators of the book rather than the section (but can Zotero distinguish this?), they should appear after the book title.

    When book authors are listed for book sections, the editors (and translators; again, if we can assume these are the book translators) should come after the book title (currently they appear before the book title).

    Translators (CTR9, p. 24):

    Homer (1991) The Illiad. Translated by R. Fagles. Introduction and notes by B. Knox. London: Penguin Books.
    Silone, I. (1994) Fontamara. Translated by G. David and E. Mosbacher. London: Redwords.

    CTR9 does not seem to include any examples containing both editor and translator. My best guess based on the examples above is:

    Editor and translator (different persons):

    Homer (1991) The Illiad. Edited by E. Editor. Translated by R. Fagles. Introduction and notes by B. Knox. London: Penguin Books.
    Editor and translator (same person):
    Homer (1991) The Illiad. Edited and translated by R. Fagles. Introduction and notes by B. Knox. London: Penguin Books.
    By the way, what about "Introduction and notes by …": Can this be done in Zotero? If not, any plans?


    CTR9 = Pears, R. and Shields, G. (2013) Cite them right: the essential referencing guide. 9th edn. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

  • OK, I think I've got all that.
    By the way, what about "Introduction and notes by …": Can this be done in Zotero? If not, any plans?
    no and no.
  • edited January 14, 2015
    Great. I spotted two issues, however:

    1. Though there is no example in CTR9 of editor(s) and translator(s) who are the same person(s), the fact that CTR9 has "Introduction and notes by" (p. 24) seems to suggest that "and" is preferred over "&", so it should be "Edited and translated by" rather than "Edited & translated by".

    2. A book section with author(s), bookauthor(s), and editor(s) is now rendered as:

    Firstauthor, F. and Secondauthor, S. (2014) ‘Book section’, in Firstauthor, F. and Secondauthor, S., Firsteditor, F. and Secondeditor, S. (eds), Translator, T. (tran.) Book title. 7th edn. Place: Publisher.

    rather than the expected

    Firstauthor, F. and Secondauthor, S. (2014) ‘Book section’, in Firstauthor, F. and Secondauthor, S., Book title. 7th edn. Edited by F. Firsteditor and S. Secondeditor. Translated by T. Translator. Place: Publisher.

    Note that I inserted a comma between book author and book title (there's not a single example of a book section with a book author in CTR9, all book section examples being from edited books and having "(ed.)" between editor and book title) but I feel it looks odd here without any punctuation.
  • Another issue:

    The volume field is not rendered at all for book and book section items.
  • Just pinging. The last two issues I reported do not seem to be fixed yet?
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