Style Reqest: Nature, only with the first three authors, then et al

jmbjork · August 7, 2017

Hello,

I'm writing a grant application for a MERIT award for the VA (Veteran's Administration) system. Their funding announcement specifies that references are limited to four pages, and that each reference must have full information, but that authors after the first three can be truncated with "et al." I'd like to cram in as many references as I can.

I notice that Nature has the nice compact superscript numerical in-line system. However, the generated bibliography does not list the first three authors then "et al" for papers with many authors I would love to see a style that modifies this to truncate after three author surnames. A bonus would be where author initials don't have periods, e.g. Laurel S, Hardy O to save a little more space.

Maybe call this "VA-MERIT"?

damnation · August 7, 2017

Have a look at this: https://gist.githubusercontent.com/POBrien333/2fc0b421464acba40b03ccf7802034dc/raw/811e506edf631165101fe62ae4ca9d1806e57ca3/Nature-modified.csl

You can use diffnow.com to see the changes I made (original vs modifed), so you can learn from it. very easy stuff: https://diffnow.com/

jmbjork · August 7, 2017

Thanks so much for the timely assistance! So I pasted your solution into Wordpad, and imported it into my Zotero Style Library. I see that the periods behind the initials have disappeared, but I'm still not seeing any reference entries where the first three authors are listed, followed by et. al. I'm only seeing the first author with et al, as is typical.

damnation · August 7, 2017

sorry. my fault. didn't concentrate.
Here you go again: https://gist.github.com/POBrien333/2fc0b421464acba40b03ccf7802034dc

jmbjork · August 7, 2017

Thanks much! When I saved the revised text into its own file I called "VAMERITapp.csl", Zotero kept linking it to the Nature (original) style, resulting in no changes. Using your tracking of edits in github, I was able to just edit the original Nature one directly to get the three-authors plus et al, since I could discern the syntax!

damnation · August 7, 2017

You need to also change the ID and self link in the top of the .csl, otherwise Zotero doesn't know the difference.

jmbjork · August 7, 2017

Done. Works perfectly now, thanks! I also learned about the platform.