Correcting AMA style---trouble saving/uploading .CSL custom-edited style

leekarlsson
Hi,
I am working on a manuscript for a scientific journal and need to remove all doi and change the titles to sentence case (first word capitalized, subsequent words lower case (unless proper nouns)). I saved-as with ".csl" at the end of my style to a folder on my computer, where the file type states it is correctly a "CSL Citation Style." However, when I try to add the style from Microsoft Word, Zotero tab, Document Preferences, Manage Styles, "+" , I get the following message: "....is not a valid CSL 1.0.1 style file, and may not work properly with Zotero. Are you sure you want to continue?"
How do I save or upload my custom style differently, so that I do not have to manually edit every citation?
Thank you!
  • DWL-SDCA
    Someone else will need to ask you specific questions about your custom style so that you may receive help.

    In the meantime, Zotero and all other bib-manager software cannot automatically convert title case titles to sentence case (but can have reasonable success doing the opposite). You should go through your library and selectively edit each of your records by right-clicking on the title and using the built-in converter. You will also need to upper-case proper nouns when you do the editing. I have my records with lower case after colons. If you need a style that requires an upper case character for the first word of a subtitle there is a way to accomplish that automatically.

    Aside: Please be certain that the publisher doesn't want the DOI strings in the manuscript. Even if these are not included in the published article many if not most publishers want the DOI in the submitted manuscript. This, among other things, is to help with reviewers tasks by facilitating their access to the cited material.
  • adamsmith
    The problem would appear to be the style, not the way in which you're trying to install it, so we'd need to see that to say more:
    copy and paste to hastebin.com , save and post the URL here

    (and yes to what DWL says about sentence casing. I'd recommend against relying on CSL's (pseudo) text-case="sentence". See https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/sentence_casing for more)
  • leekarlsson
    Thank you, DWL-SDCA and adamsmith. After closing Zotero and Word and restarting my computer, I was still unable to upload my custom saved CSL file. However, the edits I made directly in my already loaded AMA style seem to have worked. However, the title field sentence case is rather imperfect (as I had read in others' posts), not recognizing common proper nouns or capitalizing after colons/question marks in titles. I did not know about the built-in title converter and will try that, along with manually re-correcting proper nouns in the Zotero library.
    DWL-SDCA, how do I automatically upper-case a character for the first word of a subtitle? (I do need to do that.) And thank you for the heads-up about DOI...I will double check.
  • leekarlsson
    Just found the propachi plugin to upcase after a colon at the link provided by adamsmith--thank you.
  • bwiernik
    The best approach for sentence case titles is to not specify a case at all and rely on the user to store their items in Sentence case. As you found, propachi can facilitate after-the-colon capitalization.

    Regarding DOI, it is almost always better to leave it in and let the typesetters remove it. What publisher/journal are you submitting to?
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