Changes to fields and item types for Zotero 5.1

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  • @zuphilip: That's an interesting approach. So these render as unique references to individual commentaries in the volume or set in notes, but are ambiguous references to the overall work in the bibliography? That sounds nice and simple, among available options. If that is the approach, then the exclusion rule I mentioned above would not be useful, since it would suppress all of the "encyclopediaArticle" entries.

    The rule is actually meant for suppressing things like references to the classics and other frequently cited works, so it was a stretch to consider using it in this case anyway. It wouldn't have any effect on disambiguation, but it sounds like it would make things more complicated, not less.
  • edited June 23, 2019
    Yes, for example one could have the citations "Bethge, in: Sachs (Hrsg.), Grundgesetz" and "Kokott, in: Sachs (Hrsg.), Grundgesetz Kommentar" in the footnotes, which will both lead to the following entry in the list of references
    Sachs, Michael (Hrsg.), Grundgesetz, 8. Auflage, München 2018 (zitiert: Bearbeiter, in: Sachs (Hrsg.), Grundgesetz)
    As you see here, in the list of references the generic term "Bearbeiter" will be used to make the connections. Currently, one will get twice this line in the list of references, such that one has to "delete" one of them. But maybe the CSL-processor could also do that automatically?

    It is different for (legal) cases, where one would only want a citation but no entry in the list of references.
  • There has been some discussion of hierarchical items to support styles like Annual Reviews. In this style, if multiple chapters from the same book are cited, they are cited as “Chapter Author, Year, in Book Editor, Year”. A single entry for the book is then given, sorted under “Book Editor”.

    If support for such styles is ever implemented, it would be pretty easy to extend/adapt it to work for the Kommentare case being discussed.
  • @zuphilip thanks for jumping in.

    My experience with students and scholars in legal studies is that such workarounds for them subjectively add to the already existing complexity of legal citation. In the end, many only see the complexity of the solution and not the overall facilitation Zotero comes with.

    Adding a commentary type would remove the awkwardness of the encyclopedia article workaround (it’s awkward when explaining in workshops and in daily use reminds the users that they seem not to be meant to use the software) and thus add a step towards making the software look a bit friendlier to students and scholars in legal studies.
  • edited June 27, 2019
    For cites of the form "Bethge, in: Sachs (Hrsg.), Grundgesetz," where "Bethge" is specific to the reference, there is another possible approach in Jurism/CSL-M that might be reasonably intuitive to users.

    Jurism splits the user-entered locator field into two parts divided by "|". The part before the divider is passed in the CSL "locator" variable. A non-date (i.e. text not of the form "YYYY-MM-DD") is passed as CSL-M "locator-extra".

    If the leading author surname on these references does not need to appear in the bibliography, and if disambiguating the the names is not an issue, then you could use a single item in Jurism (of whatever type) fashioned to produce the desired output in the bib, and then cite portions of it with locators like:
    |Bethge
    or
    123|Bethge
    If style code conditioned on the presence of the "locator-extra" value in an item of the relevant type is added to the style, you would get the desired form in footnotes, and a single item in the bibliography. No post-processing or (other) workarounds would be needed.

    A style written in this way should work equally well in Zotero or in Jurism, although Zotero would issue a warning when it is installed, since "locator-extra" is an invalid variable name in CSL.
  • Thanks for reminding me of the locator-extra. I think, in this case, it wouldn’t help if I understand correctly. My approach would have been using the prefix which could work in plain Zotero.

    However, if my understanding of how the things work is correct, both would lead to the user having to track citations manually for correct ibidem and similar. The ibidem should track the individual commentary, not the volume of commentaries (thus it really resembles a book chapter with the sole exception that only the overall volume should be entered in the bibliography).
  • Maybe another approach would be to introduce a "type" for chapters. We already have something like this for reports and thesis. However, it could be more suitable to fix the allowed values then.
  • Got it. So that's true in the current implementation; but the original use case for locator-extra was looseleaf supplements, where the same problem arises, so this will need to be fixed and documented anyway.

    Whatever approach is adopted, some adjustment in the processor will be needed to treat this category of material specially. Using locator-extra might get you there without going through a CSL schema revision.
  • Adding a "type" to chapter sounds like a good idea. This could also solve the bookinbook-problem. (Books republished in collected works => titles should not appear in quotes but in italics.)
  • “bookinbook” is best handled by setting the item as “book” and specifying a container title.
  • @fbennet it’s not entirely clear to me what the locator-extra currently does or what it should do. If implemented as intended, the locator-extra should provide idem tracking?

    Considering the following footnotes (first and subsequent citation):
    Danzl in Koziol/Bydlinski/Bollenberger (Hrsg), Kommentar zum ABGB³ § 1320 Rz 7 (2010).
    Danzl in KBB³ § 1320 Rz 7.

    That would be
    [Commentator] in [collection editors] (Hrsg.), [collection title][edition] [commented sections] ([year]).
    and
    [Commentator] in [short collection title][edition] [commented sections].

    So, the locator-extra should contain the [commented sections]? Where to put the [commentator] then?

    [The reference list would contain
    Koziol/Bydlinski/Bollenberger (Hrsg), Kommentar zum ABGB3 (2010).]
  • The pinpoint in the word processor would look like this:
    sec. 1320 Rz 7|Danzl
    The "Danzl" value would be added to the actual item ID internally when evaluating ibidem (and only for that purpose). That would make these look like separate items to the processor when generating footnotes or in-text references, but with only a single item in the bibliography for the overall work. It looks like that would do exactly what is required (once implemented).
  • A question, though. When there is a second cite to the overall work, but to a different commentator, should the citation be of short form, or should the full details of the overall work be shown again? (The former treatment will be easier to implement, but ease of implementation at my end shouldn't really be a factor in this).
  • When there is a second cite to the overall work, but to a different commentator, should the citation be of short form, or should the full details of the overall work be shown again?
    That's a good question. I haven't found an authoritative statement about that. Observations in well supported Citavi styles lead me to think that it's very probably the latter. But I'm contacting an expert to make sure.

    Another issue with comments are looseleaf deliveries. A citation containing a looseleaf commentary might look like this:
    Kneihs/Lienbacher in Korinek/Holoubek (Hg), B-VG Art 142 Rz 32f (8. Lfg 2007)
    Here, 8. Lfg is the looseleaf delivery number (I hope that's how it's called in English) and it's put in parenthesis with the delivery year. Using the locator-extra, I think this should be entered as
    Kneihs/Lienbacher|Art 142 Rz 32f (8. Lfg 2007)
    which already means that quite some formatting has to be entered manually.

    But with a style prepared for this use case, non-looseleaf commentaries also always would have to be entered with the year in the pinpoint, isn't it?
  • edited July 2, 2019
    @gduffner: Your looseleaf example contains four elements of supplementary data: (1) The authors; (2) the article pinpoint; (3) the looseleaf details; and (4) the date of the looseleaf supplement. That's beyond the capacity of the locator-extra solution. Thank you for your feedback on these requirements: we should probably draw a line under discussion of that particular solution. The most promising approach, barring deep changes in CSL and Zotero, may be that of @zuphilip up-thread.
  • Yes, I think the looseleaf example is an extreme one which I won’t pursue here.

    So, I’m looking foreward to the improvements of the locator-extra in Jurism.

    Still, I think it would be great if the commentary document type would be implemented in CSL in general, even if it’s only one step towards a solution.
  • @gduffner: The ibid adjustment for locator-extra is done in the processor and ready to go. I will include it in the next release of Jurism, due out later this week. It's unlikely that Zotero will adopt this change until there is a processor bugfix revision that affects mainstream CSL, so it might take awhile before it is reflected here.
  • @fbennet propachi would take care of this in the interim right?
  • I've decomissioned Propachi to simplify things (announcement here). Its main role was to enable uppercasing of the first character of subtitles by setting a processor toggle. That's now done directly in Zotero for styles that need it. Propachi was also used for quick bugfixes, but the processor is pretty stable these days and there is not much need for that. (This particular change relates to a variable that is not available in CSL, so technically it's not a Zotero feature.)
  • Not a programmer and newish to Zotero, using Zotero in a group project tracking historical business reference sources, ie Serials. I see you have Journal Articles as an Item, but no Journal or Serials. I'm I missing something?
  • Related to my previous question, when can I use Add by Identifier by ISSN?
  • You can not add items by ISSN. There's not database for ISSNs and no catalog that return even reasonably reliable metadata for them.

    There's currently no periodical item type, though it's generally planned. I think you'd like be best of using book for the time being.
  • thank you. When do you think the periodical/serial/journal item might be available? I thought it was planned for most recent release?
  • @adamsmith
    For commentaries/Kommentare specifically, what I'd want to see before considering is a wider need or a higher level category we can use for it. I'd be reluctant to add an item type that's specific to one discipline in one country.
    I tried to find examples in other languages but not very successfully. I know that I once came across an Italian text that cited commentaries different from book chapters but the closest I could get is an institutional citation guide of the Università degli Studi di Camerino (https://biblioteche.unicam.it/sites/biblioteche.unicam.it/files/Norme redazione tesi giurisprudenza_0_0.pdf) where on p. 4 you can see that the editors are treated differently in commentaries and book chapters.

    I have no idea what styles are used in other languages.
  • edited July 25, 2019
    Also @adamsmith


    For commentaries/Kommentare specifically, what I'd want to see before considering is a wider need or a higher level category we can use for it. I'd be reluctant to add an item type that's specific to one discipline in one country.


    Well, at least it's the same here in Switzerland.

    Anyway, I think the trickier question in the long run is how hierarchical items should be handled.

    (how do you quote text here in the forums?)
  • @maier.de is it the same in Switzerland in any of the three languages (I fear, there’s no legal citation style for Rumantsch)?
  • edited July 25, 2019
    @gduffner
    I don't know about Italian, but French and German seem to handle commentaries in a similar way. At least this is what I can infer from the biblatex-swiss-legal biblatex style.

  • @bwiernik
    Using item type book for “bookinbook”-like items is actually not a too bad approach. CMOS gives me this:

    Horkheimer, Max, and Theodor W. Adorno. Dialektik der Aufklärung. Edited by Rolf Tiedemann. Gesammelte Schriften. Vol. 3. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2003.

    I would, however, expect something like this:

    Horkheimer, Max, and Theodor W. Adorno. Dialektik der Aufklärung. In Gesammelte Schriften, by Theodor. W. Adorno, edited by Rolf Tiedemann, Vol. 3. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2003.

    (This is what I get with item type chapter. I only have replaced the quotes around "Dialektik der Aufklärung" with italics.)

    So we have three problems:

    1. Missing "In" before container-title
    2. Position of editor is inappropriate.
    3. container-author does not appear at all.

    If using book is the official approach to the "bookinbook"-problem then the standard styles should cover this. (I can look into the styles, but I would need to know first that this is the accepted solution.)

  • Is there a way to add an "ebook" or "ejournal" TYPE? I need to distinguish between the two and most style manuals require a distinction. Please forgive if already answered somewhere else...new to forums.
  • There isn’t really a need for a different type. Ejournals can be indicated by providing a DOI or URL in the field. Ebooks similar can be indicated by providing a DOI or URL, and potentially including “Medium: Kindle book” (or whatever format) in the Extra field.
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