Hi, thanks, I think that must be it. The one I am looking at now has multiple works--in one reference, the first name is used fully, in another, the initial.

Will edit accordingly.

Thanks!

I exactly have the same feeling than tonyc2001. This issue is all the more surprising that I created my own CSL style file, and the following line could be expected as turning off first name initial insertions in citation:
<option name="disambiguate-add-givenname" value="false"/>

But there is no effects... Would it be a bug to be fixed?

Regards

Régis

This looks like a bug in Zotero. I observe that:
1) For a citations where there is no period (.) after each initial on the Zotero "Info" tab , the initial is included in the citation in my Word document.
(J R O'Connell & D E Weeks, 1995)
2) If I add periods to the first author's initials in Zotero, and click the 'refresh zotero' button on the Word toolbar, the initial is omitted in the Word document citation.
(O'Connell & D E Weeks, 1995)
3) If the author has only one initial, it is omitted from the Word citation regardless of whether it is followed by a period.
(Kruglyak, M J Daly, & E S Lander, 1995)
4)The initials are always followed by an period in the bibliography in the Word document regardless of whether the period is stored in Zotero or not.

Unfortunately when collecting citations across multiple websites some are stored with periods after the initials and some not. This inconsistent behaviour doesn't conform to the style selected. I hope it can be repaired.

--Later
After checking all references in my document discovered that not all conform to the above. Furthermore sometimes the initials appear before the surname and sometimes after. For 3 out of about 70 references the only solution to get rid of the initials was to delete the initials from the Zotero database. Think I'll give Endnote a try out.

Well, I've tried a few styles hoping that might fix things e.g. I tried "Chicago (author-date)". Since none of the default styles match the format I'm accustomed to, I've downloaded and now use "Harvard reference format 3". I still have to manually tweak the DB entries to get rid of initials.

apparently you need to remove option name="disambiguate-add-givenname"

it doesn't help to set it to false. However, the default seems to be "false" so removing it works

I've been struggling with this problem for a few weeks now. In all (author-date) citation styles, some of my citations will have first names or initials added to them:

(John W. Moreau and Sharp 2004) [incorrect]

when it should be:

(Moreau and Sharp 2004) [correct]

I think that this is a real bug in Zotero (more on that later). It's related to having multiple authors with the same last name in the database. First, here is a summary of quick fixes. Just go down the list until the problem goes away:

1. Change author entries that have no space or a period between the first and middle initials. Ex: "Moreau, JW" and "Moreau, J.W." will cause problems.

2. Change author entries to add a period after all initials. Ex: changing "Moreau, J W" to "Moreau, J. W." may fix the conflict.

3. Change author entries for the same author but with different formats. Ex: "Moreau, J. W." and "Moreau, John W." may cause a conflict.

4. Add middle initials to author entries. Zotero can't seem to differentiate authors with both a first and middle name from authors with only a first name. Unfortunately, this can't always be fixed. Ex: "Moreau, John W." and "Moreau, Myriam" will cause a conflict.

5. Remove the line <option name="disambiguate-add-givenname" value="false"/> from the CSL style file. Actually, this step should remove the problem altogether, but not everybody knows how to edit CSL files. Here's the real bug in Zotero. It appears that this line doesn't do what it's supposed to do, but deleting it does what it should do in the first place. Also, it appears that the line <option name="disambiguate-add-names" value="false"/> doesn't work either.

I was able to fix most of my citation issues by the first three steps, and unfortunately it takes a lot of time to edit each entry in the database, especially surnames like Williams and Smith. But in the end there were a few stragglers and I still had to edit the CSL file.

Tony2001,

If you're still following this thread ... I've just recently built the disambiguation machinery for a new CSL process meant for use in Zotero. One of the issues it will address is disambiguation by givennames, and I think your concerns will be addressed. Basically, you'll only get expanded/added first names where it makes a difference, and when it makes a difference, only one set of initials/one givenname will be added. It will also unwind any author names added in the add-names phase of disambiguation, if the cite can be distinguished without them. If the names are hopelessly the same, no initials/givennames will be added, since none of them helped.

There are software tests that illustrates this behaviour here, if you'd like to take a look:

http://xbiblio.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/xbiblio/citeproc-js/branches/fbennett/std/humans/disambiguate_MinimalGivennameExpandMinimalNames.txt?revision=882&view=markup

http://xbiblio.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/xbiblio/citeproc-js/branches/fbennett/std/humans/disambiguate_GivennameExpandCrossNestedNames.txt?revision=882&view=markup


If you have comments on the tests, or requests for additional tuning of this behaviour, please post them. A CSL formatter is a complicated piece of machinery and it will be awhile before this is deployed, but your concerns are being worked on in various quarters.

Frank Bennett

Um ... if I read the code of the existing CSL processor code correctly, it doesn't make any difference in current Zotero. After the initialize-with initials are formed up, the processor has this, at lines 690-691 of csl.js:

if(firstName[firstName.length-1] == " ") {
firstName = firstName.substr(0, firstName.length-1);
}

What that's doing is looking for a space at the end of the first name (or initial) variable, and chopping it off. A space is added again later, when the full name is formed up. This reading is supported by the existing styles, which sometimes use ".", sometimes ". ", but don't seem to produce extra spaces in generated names.

Whether this is the right thing to do or should be changed is an open question, but it might not hurt anything to retain this behaviour.

That's true. Hmm. The space has two possible meanings doesn't it: the space between the initials and the surname, and the space between the initials. Handling this by piling in additional parameters would get messy, how about this. If no space at the end of the initialize-with string, you get no spaces anywhere, so: H.L.A.Hart. If one space, you get a space between the initials and the surname, so: H.L.A. Hart. If two spaces, you get spaces between the initials as well, so: H. L. A. Hart.

It's not backward compatible; styles that have "." set currently would need to be fixed. How big of a problem would that be, I wonder?

This isn't complicated, nor is it broken. The attribute configures the content between initials. The space between name parts is not configurable.

Of course you can exclude initials from output; look at how the apa style configures the citation.

I was just referring to the CSL discussion; am not sure about any Zotero bugs, except I've not seen them myself (and I use author-date styles).

I have the same problem as do others with in text citations that are both inconsistent and put in first or middle names in a seemingly random fashion. Sometimes I get the full name, sometimes I get initials etc. I manually edit out the full name in the database but that does not always work. I am putting to bed a 180 page manuscript and this is problematic. I am afraid that I do not understand any of the discourse of 15 April - it is far beyond my technical competence. My layman's question - how can I control the in-text citation style. Like everyone in this thread I want it to look like this (last-name, date) or (last-name, date: page 245). I need to produce this document in the next week or so.

If I understand, I will look at every incident of inconsistent citation and go to the database and ensure that they are all handled the same way. E.g. for me, I will always identify authors by last name and fist initial only with out a full stop. No middle names. That should do it?

You mention output style choices. I use Harvard now but are there other outputs styles that do not try to disambiguate citation?

Thanks for this. I am a bit beyond my technical comfort zone. You suggest that I click on the above link and it will take me to a file. I save that file, change the extension to .csl then drag it into any firefox window and it will update the Harvard Style on my copy of Zotero (1.5)? This will prevent the multiple treatment of authors names both as citations and in the referencing? I take it this is a permanent change to the Harvard style?

Many thanks.

Thanks,it seems to work well. Now I don't have to continue to edit all the first names of every reference (800 +) in my database! That should work for me. I guess at some point disambiguation will be integrated into a core release of the software.