Upgrade StorageIn-text citation shows "multiple authors et al."
I use Zotero's plugin for Word 2011 for Mac and frequently come across the following issue:
No matter what citation style is set for the document, Zotero will sometimes (with no apparent pattern) cite papers with multiple authors followed by "et al." in text. Sometimes it lists two, and sometimes three; regardless it looks bizarre and is not a standard format in any field I know.
As an example, if I have a paper:
Smith, A., Grant, B., Chen, C., Holder, D. (2016). "Are PhDs really worth it?"
Zotero will sometimes format in-text citations as follows:
Some people believe PhDs are not worthwhile (Smith, Grant, Chen, et al., 2016).
Zotero does this seemingly at random, but consistently with the same papers (i.e. if I delete this sentence and re-type it, the in-text citation will look the same). Obviously, in the case above, the appropriate in-text citation would just be "Smith et al., 2016".
Does anyone know how to fix this systematically? Manually editing Zotero in-text citations creates a mess of problems and often reverts to the old format.
No matter what citation style is set for the document, Zotero will sometimes (with no apparent pattern) cite papers with multiple authors followed by "et al." in text. Sometimes it lists two, and sometimes three; regardless it looks bizarre and is not a standard format in any field I know.
As an example, if I have a paper:
Smith, A., Grant, B., Chen, C., Holder, D. (2016). "Are PhDs really worth it?"
Zotero will sometimes format in-text citations as follows:
Some people believe PhDs are not worthwhile (Smith, Grant, Chen, et al., 2016).
Zotero does this seemingly at random, but consistently with the same papers (i.e. if I delete this sentence and re-type it, the in-text citation will look the same). Obviously, in the case above, the appropriate in-text citation would just be "Smith et al., 2016".
Does anyone know how to fix this systematically? Manually editing Zotero in-text citations creates a mess of problems and often reverts to the old format.
Smith, A., Grant, B., Chen, C., Holder, D. (2016). and
Smith, A., Grant, B., Meyer, C., Mueller, D. (2016).
Then Smith et al., 2016 is ambiguous. It's a common rule in style manuals (e.g. APA) to add authors to in text citations to disambiguate. If you're sure that's incorrect for the journal in question (and you nees Smith et al. 2016a and 2016b instead), we'd need some evidence for that (note from editor, sample from recenly published article) and we can fix it.
So then I guess the question has two parts. First, in cases of ambiguity where multiple papers exist with the same first author and year, do any of the default citation styles in the Zotero plug-in use the citation format of (Smith et al. 2016a) rather than the extended in-text citation that @adamsmith described?
And second, in situations where Zotero lists multiple authors in the in-text citation but the attribution is unambiguous and there is only one paper in the document by that author, is that just a bug with the particular reference file?
Alheit, Jürgen, Thomas Pohlmann, Michele Casini, Wulf Greve, Rosemarie Hinrichs, Moritz Mathis, Kieran O’Driscoll, Ralf Vorberg, and Carola Wagner. 2012. “Climate Variability Drives Anchovies and Sardines into the North and Baltic Seas.” Progress in Oceanography 96 (1): 128–39. doi:10.1016/j.pocean.2011.11.015.
Dulvy, Nicholas K., Stuart I. Rogers, Simon Jennings, Vanessa Stelzenmller, Stephen R. Dye, and Hein R. Skjoldal. 2008. “Climate Change and Deepening of the North Sea Fish Assemblage: A Biotic Indicator of Warming Seas.” Journal of Applied Ecology 45 (4): 1029–39. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2664.2008.01488.x.
Couce, Elena, Andy Ridgwell, and Erica J. Hendy. 2012. “Environmental Controls on the Global Distribution of Shallow-Water Coral Reefs.” Journal of Biogeography 39 (8): 1508–23. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2699.2012.02706.x.
Couce, Elena, Andy Ridgwell, and Erica J Hendy. 2013. “Future Habitat Suitability for Coral Reef Ecosystems under Global Warming and Ocean Acidification.” Global Change Biology 19 (12): 3592–3606. doi:10.1111/gcb.12335.
The in-text citations are formatted as (Couce, Ridgwell, & Hendy, 201X), in both cases. However, this is not a case of ambiguity since the papers were published in different years - so both in-text citations should be formatted as (Couce et al., 201X).
2. If this happens in other cases, it's pretty unlikely to be a bug. This stuff gets tested pretty thoroughly. The first thing to try would then be to insert the same item in an empty document. If you do get a correct citation, you're likely just overlooking something in the original doc. If it looks wrong there, too, there might be a problem with the item data in Zotero, so double check that.
The way to get out of this is:
- to delete all duplicated citations in the Zotero database (for safety)
- to delete all citations of this reference in the text of the manuscript
- to reinsert the citation at each relevant place making sure to cite the same citation of the Zotero database
In text citations for some multi-authored citations appear with et al., while others list each author. It seems to be consistent which journal articles are listed with et al., vs. citations with all authors listed in the text.
E.g. Rosel, Wilcox, Yamada, and Mullin, 2021
Rosel PE, Wilcox LA, Yamada TK, Mullin KD. A new species of baleen whale
(Balaenoptera) from the Gulf of Mexico, with a review of its geographic distribution. Mar Mam Sci. 2021; 1–34. https://doi.org/10.1111/mms.12776
The Marine Mammal Science Guide to Authors instructs as follows: (https://marinemammalscience.org/journal/guide-for-authors/):
"Reference List: References should be cited in the text in the following form:
One author: Smith (2000) and (Smith, 2000).
Two authors: (Smith & Jones, 2004) and Smith and Jones (2004).
Three or more authors: Smith et al. (1993) and (Smith et al., 1993)."
I have reviewed the dialogue above and ensured the problem citations (those with multiple authors) are not duplicated in my library. I've checked the duplicate folder as well and removed any duplicates.
Elsevier Harvard does seem to change the in text citation, however this changes the format of the citations in the Bibliography. For this journal the full journal name is needed in the Bibliography.
See REFERENCES in:
Rosel PE, Wilcox LA, Yamada TK, Mullin KD. A new species of baleen whale (Balaenoptera) from the Gulf of Mexico, with a review of its geographic distribution. Mar Mam Sci. 2021; 1–34. https://doi.org/10.1111/mms.12776
Brown, D. M., Robbins, J., Sieswerda, P. L., Schoelkopf, R., & Parsons, E. C. M. (2018). Humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) sightings in the New York‐New Jersey Harbor Estuary. Marine Mammal Science, 34(1), 250-257.
Can you please advise.
how it can be solved ?
@dstillman Can we split this off?
I'm using the "Elsevier - Harvard (with titles) style. This is how the citation shows up in my document. This is the first time I used "Cobben" and "Autio" see below.
Any suggestions to fix this would be helpful.
"These support systems or their components may be called supply chains, clusters, network, platform, alliance, partnerships, trade organizations, unions, accelerators, or incubators, but they are all either entrepreneurial ecosystems or contributors to those ecosystems (Cobben et al., 2022)
Entrepreneurial Ecosystems (EE)s have attracted increasing attention from management scholars, policymakers, and practitioners over the past decade (Autio et al., 2014; Cobben et al., 2022; Jacobides et al., 2018; Shipilov and Gawer, 2020; Wurth et al., 2021)"