Error in American Sociological Association style

zminer · December 31, 2014

According to page 2 of the American Sociological Association's "Quick Tips for ASA Style" - http://www.asanet.org/documents/teaching/pdfs/Quick_Tips_for_ASA_Style.pdf - correctly citing websites using ASA style requires location information (i.e. - the city and state where the person/organization publishing the web page is located). However, the current Zotero web page citation window doesn't seem to have location info, meaning this information has to be added in manually once a bibliography is created.

Is this something that's an easy fix? Or would it involve making major changes to the way the plugin works?

Thanks for any help you can offer.

- Zachary

DWL-SDCA · December 31, 2014

This doesn't answer your question but I have a question or two of my own.

Where does the ASA expect you to find that information? It is often difficult to identify any single specific place of origin for a web page. Your linked document didn't provide guidance. The webpages of many organizations (including those of several sociological ones) list contact info for officers but not an organization office location. Membership matters are handled with online forms so we don't have a postal address. If one of the officers addresses should be used, which one? President? Newsletter editor? Maybe the company that designed and operates the website -- this seems analogous to a journal publisher.

Even when I have performed a whois search of the domain name, I often find the registration contact address to be private. The possibility of automated retrieval of the publisher location is remote.

On a similar topic, many (predatory?) journal publishers do not list a city or nation on their website. Even the LOC and ISSN registry record lists the publisher location as SN.

zuphilip · January 1, 2015

@zminer: Are you sure this is a strict requirement? I can see the examples for websites where it the city is also given, but the text does not state this as a requirement (at least I haven't read that in the quick guide). What is written in the corresponding book "ASA style guide (5th ed.)" about webpages? The examples on http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ogBCcVOQ4GsJ:https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/583/03/+&cd=1&hl=de&ct=clnk&gl=de (google cache of [1]) look differently.

@DWL-SDCA: The legal term for these kind of information (also on a webpage) is impressum. In Germany:

The Telemediengesetz ("Telemedia Act") requires that German websites must disclose information about the publisher, including their name and address, telephone number or e-mail address, trade registry number, VAT number, and other information depending on the type of company. (Source: wikipedia)

The same is not true for other countries, e.g. for the US. Moreover, it is possible that "German" pages does not have an impressum, however, you can then sue aggainst such websites (and laywers make money with it).

adamsmith · January 1, 2015

but to answer the original question -- it's currently not an easy fix, no, since changing available fields for an item type is non-trivial.

zminer · January 1, 2015

To be perfectly honest, I did not realize that a 5th edition of ASA style had been released, and I appreciate your linking to it. I had done a bunch of research into Zotero prior to this last semester (and noted the problem with the location then, but put it off until now) and the new style was released in September 2014. So, I really appreciate the new info and will certainly look into it. Hopefully my library will have a copy of the new stylebook when I return for the Spring semester.

Thanks to all who replied. It looks like this may no longer be an issue in the 5th Edition of the style, but I will confirm this when I get my hands on the new style book.