Removal of custom Harvard Style from the Style Repository

edited November 12, 2018
Hello,

Dublin City University have a custom Harvard Style available for selection in the style repository. We have since aligned with the Cite Them Right 10th Edition and the continued presence of the DCU style is causing confusion among students. Is it possible to remove this completely from the repository and how might I do so?

Kind Regards,

Ronan

Business Librarian,
Dublin City University
Glasnevin,
Dublin 9
Ireland
  • We'll do that, thanks for being in touch -- would it make sense to leave the style name and just have it link to Cite Them Right? That way students would find the right style even if they're unaware of the use of Cite Them Right (we're doing the same for a couple of other schools). If you'd rather not, we can also entirely remove the style.
  • @ronan.c.cox, yes, it's certainly possible to remove the style. Is there a webpage that mentions that Dublin City University now uses Cite Them Right 10th Edition?

    @adamsmith, a removal probably makes more sense here than a redirect, right?
  • @Rintze -- I think either will work fine.

    Here's the page from the library that makes the use of CTR pretty clear: https://www.dcu.ie/library/classes_and_tutorials/citingreferencing.shtml
  • Hello Adam and Rintze,

    I think the removal makes more sense as we do have an online PDF guide that explicitly mentions the use of Cite Them Right 10th edition.

    Yes, that is the page that mentions it. You will also see the link on that page for the Harvard style doc which also mentions the 10th edition.

    Best,

    Ronan
  • Since the "Referencing Management Tools" tab of that page says "When using referencing tools, particularly the likes of RefWorks / Mendeley / Zotero please use Harvard Cite Them Write output style if you are required to use Harvard style referencing.", I would just delete the current University style.
  • As a followup, what will this mean for students who have been using the old DCU style to date? Will this disappear from the Word plugin as an option for those who have already selected it?
  • Also, with regard to Cite Them Right 10th edition, is there a way to make this appear by default when selecting document preferences? If my memory serves me correctly, users are required to manually install this style from the 'get additional styles' function. It is not listed automatically when first using Zotero.
  • Also, with regard to Cite Them Right 10th edition, is there a way to make this appear by default when selecting document preferences?
    @dstillman the AAA style that is currently in the default set doesn't make a lot of sense anymore (AAA is now using Chicago and doesn't have its own style). This is the dominant style in UK academic instutions and would thus seem like a good candidate (in spite of my misgivings about the style itself). Does that sound good to you? If so I'll create the PR.
  • It is also the dominant style for business schools throughout Ireland. Even though I am biased, I think it makes a lot of sense to include as a default and I am surprised that it is not already.
  • Well, it's virtually unknown in the US, where Zotero is from, and its popularity in the UK and Ireland (sorry!) is comparatively recent. The last time the default styles were updated is five years ago or so.
  • As a followup, what will this mean for students who have been using the old DCU style to date? Will this disappear from the Word plugin as an option for those who have already selected it?
    The lead developer of Zotero indicated that Zotero should open the document preferences window in Word to allow the user to select a difference style (https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/comment/314351/#Comment_314351). That should only affect people don't have the style installed in Zotero and open a Word document that was created with the now-deleted style. Deleting the style from the repository won't delete it from people's local Zotero installations.

    Not sure how well Mendeley deals with this.
  • adamsmith 50 minutes ago
    Well, it's virtually unknown in the US, where Zotero is from, and its popularity in the UK and Ireland (sorry!) is comparatively recent. The last time the default styles were updated is five years ago or so.

    Perhaps there is precedent to update the styles now? If all of the existing default styles are still relevant, no problem at all. Honestly, if it does not happen, it is fine but I think there is certainly a case that can be made for Cite Them Right to be included as a default given the amount of universities across the UK and Ireland that utilise it.
  • @adamsmith: Removing AAA from the default set is fine, but I'm not sure about adding this one if it's largely a UK/Ireland-specific style. We don't have, say, French- or German-specific styles as defaults. (I don't know if there are equivalent styles.) I'm not entirely sure how to think about the existing defaults like APA, but my sense is that, despite being ostensibly "American" styles, those see more global usage?

    (Also, while this has no real bearing on the style itself, it's not particularly encouraging that the official site won't load in Firefox — and, very soon, Chrome — because they haven't updated their site certificate after the Symantec distrust.)
  • I guess I'd be inclined to do this empirically -- couldn't you just collect (anonymized) download stats for zotero.org/styles and we could see if there are any styles that stand out as frequent downloads and include them? (as Rintze has said a couple of times in the past, we'd love a sense of those numbers, too)

    Germany and France don't have standard styles, but other countries (like Brazil with ABNT and Russia with GOST) do, so that's a valid concern. What I would say is that we get a _ton_ of people asking about "Harvard" styles still (*sigh*) and that version is as close to a standard "Harvard" style as there currently is. We used to e.g. have "Harvard 1" as a default style for that reason. (just to be clear, I'm mainly thinking aloud here -- I don't have super strong, let alone passionate views on this).
  • Hi, I am wondering if there has been any decision on whether to include the Cite Them Right Harvard style as a default shipping option?

    Also, in relation to the default styles that Zotero ships with, is there a list of these anywhere for easy consultation?

    Thanks,

    Ronan
  • I think Dan was strongly leaning towards no on Cite Them Right.
    The list of bundled styles is here: https://github.com/zotero/bundled-styles
  • Okay no problem, thanks for the update Adam.
  • I guess I'd be inclined to do this empirically -- couldn't you just collect (anonymized) download stats for zotero.org/styles and we could see if there are any styles that stand out as frequent downloads and include them?
    Style downloads: Zotero client
    Style downloads: all clients

    The first list is recent style downloads by the Zotero client — i.e., from people manually adding styles through the Cite pane of the preferences.

    The second list is recent style downloads from all clients, which includes downloads from browsers (which might be Zotero users) and downloads from other programs that use this repo. There's a good chance these are somewhat more automated and/or skewed by the default styles in other programs, but they probably give a decent overall picture.

    I've added an asterisk next to the styles that are already bundled with Zotero. (For the first list, I assume people are trying to add those either by mistake or for some troubleshooting purpose (like trying to get sentence case from APA?).)

    (In the first list, a few styles (e.g., ISO690) are much higher than when checking unique IPs, presumably due to some large single-IP Zotero-using institutions requiring them, but there's less of an effect in the overall list.)

    Based on these stats, I've added Cite Them Right to the default set. I've also removed AAA as suggested by adamsmith above, though it won't be removed from existing installs.

    We can consider if there are other changes we want to make. For example, we removed AMA from the default set years ago, I think because it was so similar to Vancouver, but people are certainly still trying to use it. ACS is popular, as are ASA and APSA, both of which we used to bundle. We could consider removing Cell, which is way down on the overall list.
  • I think all of those additions and removals sound good.
  • This is great news! I really appreciate you taking the time to examine the usage data and make the change. It will certainly help my students and many others I am sure.
  • Yes, indeed, thanks Dan! CC @Rintze who had been curious about this for a while.

    @dstillman -- I agree with bwiernik that all your suggestions (add ACS, ASA, AMA, APSA, remove Cell) make sense. We had removed APSA and ASA because they're quite similar to Chicago (author-date), but if people are looking for them, why not add them back in.

    Nature also looks like a good candidate for removal (both not used a ton and then the only remaining journal(family)-specific style.) AMA would be a particularly useful substitute since that keeps one superscript-numerical style bundled.

    That would be four in, two out, which keeps the total number reasonable.
  • As a follow up to my original query about removing the Dublin City University - Harvard style completely in order to avoid confusion, is there an indicative timeframe for removal? As of right now, it is still listed under style search.

    Cheers.
  • Sorry about that -- we'll do that this week.
  • Nature also looks like a good candidate for removal (both not used a ton and then the only remaining journal(family)-specific style.)
    Nature is pretty high up on the all-clients list — 7th place, and equal to or above many of the ones we're adding or keeping — so I'm inclined to leave that in, even if it's a bit of an outlier.
  • @ronan.c.cox OK, done. The style should disappear from the various software products as they update from the main repository. For Zotero that's about 30mins, most others take a bit longer.
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