Suggestion: Support for different citation styles in one document

alistaircom
I'm writing a systematic literature review that uses APA 6th for citation style. When I customize the citations in the text, they are "corrected" back to the original style requiring that I go through the document and fix everything.

There are 3 styles that I would like to use:

1. In-text citation: Years are getting shorter with little time available (Gilmour, Mason, Waters, & Wright, 1973).
2. In-text citation, year only: Waters (1973) found that lunatics are known to frequent the grass.
3. Articles matching the theme of Lunar Dark Sides: Gilmour, Waters, 1973; Mason, 1973; Wright, Torry, 1973.

It would be great if the Word plugin had an option that you could select a particular type of citation. Either as a separate button, or a dropdown when selecting the source.
  • olivergraf
    There seems to be a long discussion on how to implement point 2 (as the name is grammatically part of the sentence) but switching between 1 and 3 would be great and seems rather simple (e.g. checkbox that would allow to not just suppress the author but also the brackets). So count me in on those waiting for this feature to be implemented.
  • sailaway
    I heartily welcome this feature. That option 2 is missing is a big limitation in usefulness of Zotero.
  • poettli
    Option 2: or simply change the place of the bracket in the text, Zotero will remember it while inserting/updating the bibliography
  • JimWAndrews1964
    Can I add my support for this - my reason for asking is that this might be a (partial) way around the issue of wanting to insert a separate bibliography in different sections of the same Word document.

    The ability to use different styles could allow a citation style to be used in the text, and a "bibliography" style to be used in the section bibliography. OK, this isn't automated, but it's a step in the right direction.
  • adamsmith
    (FWIW, option 2 above is generally in the works, though not ETA).
    Jim -- I don't quite understand what you're after, could you give a more specific example? We'll almost certainly not allow for two different citation styles (as opposed to different variants of the same style, which 2 refers to) in the same document, but there may be other ways to get what you want.
  • lo.ja
    I would also welcome the possibility to use two citation style because in my work I have to differenciate citations from press and those from academic papers and books.
    For now I use footnotes but it would be great if I could have :
    1 - in text citation : blablabla (John 1956)
    2 - footnote citation : blablabla² and a footnote with the complete or simplified citation (for example ² "Forests are burning", The Globe, James Watson, 15/5/2020)
    I can add footnote manually in Word but I either have to use in text citation in it (after citing the title manually for example) or I have to copy-paste the bibliography of the article from zotero with no automatic updating possible after.
  • bwiernik
    That type of combination isn’t possible and almost certainly won’t be.
  • dimitri.courant
    I have the exact same wish as lo.ja. Using two citation for distinguishing secondary academic literature and primary sources such as press articles would be incredibly useful.
    This would help all those working with two main types of sources and was requested by many historians, archeologs and theologists. It is also needed for sociology and political science.
    Why do you think "That type of combination isn’t possible and almost certainly won’t be." bwiernik?

    See my other post on this issue here:
    https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/17716/secondary-vs-source-literature-two-different-citing-styles-within-a-document/p3
  • adamsmith
    Why do you think "That type of combination isn’t possible and almost certainly won’t be." bwiernik?
    because bwiernik (and I) don't see us adding support for this in CSL -- it introduces a huge amount of complexity for a case that's both rare and, to be quite frank, not a particularly good idea.
  • dimitri.courant
    Ok, thanks for the answer.

    I am not sure what is the criteria of evaluation for the "goodness" of the idea. If it is a technical one, I am outside my area of expertise and trust your word.

    If it is a scientific or a logical one, I will politely disagree. Some scientific journals actually request citations for non-academic primary sources (law, press article, interview...) to be in footnotes and not in the bibliography contrary to the academic secondary literature that needs to be in parenthesis author-date style and appearing in the bibliography.
    Morevoer, for my thesis I quote many press articles, officials laws, interviews etc. but if they are included in the same bibliography as the secondary literature, that unique bibliography is going to be really long, messy and hard to read.
    On that note, other discussions were hinting that allowing for having separate bibliographies in the same document, mainly to distinguish between secondary literature and primary sources as most books or articles do in historical studies. However, it is unclear whether this is actually possible or will be in the near future, or ever.
    See:
    https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/1741/multiple-bibliographies/p1
    https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/9293/classical-citations

    On the other discussion bwiernik had a useful suggestion:
    "I would suggest just adding your primary source references as regular footnotes with static text (not linked to Zotero). You can drag the item from Zotero to the footnote to insert a static reference."
    https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/17716/secondary-vs-source-literature-two-different-citing-styles-within-a-document/p3

    This is useful in the meantime but it would be better if two styles were allowed, especially for not having to manually correct the format of footnotes one by one, and for automatic updates.

    Anyway thanks for your help
  • adamsmith
    Separate bibliographies are a different topic -- those are to some extent already possible (i.e. you can sort by item type) and better ability to do that is definitely something we'd be interested in.

    Obviously my assessment that two citation styles in the same document are a bad idea is to some degree a matter of taste, but it's no coincidence that no major style guide in any language I'm aware of does, or even allows, this. In any case, even if you disagree with the substantive assessment, the technical complexity is so significant that only massive demand would justify it, and I'm not seeing that, neither from users nor from citation requirements.
  • dimitri.courant
    Once again, thanks for your answer and your explanation.

    Is there a tutorial on the separate bibliographies? That could be a kind of solution.

    As for the two styles I am surprised it is not done or allowed since I did read articles, chapters or books, but more importantly thesis, in which the distinction is done, i.e academic literature is quoted in parenthesis and appears in the bibliography while primary sources are in footnotes only. As for interviews, unless I am mistaken, they are always quoted in footnotes only, even in the American Political Science Review.

    See for instance:
    https://www.researchgate.net/publication/314136362_The_Macro_Political_Uptake_of_the_G1000_in_Belgium

    https://dial.uclouvain.be/pr/boreal/en/object/boreal:186556

    https://www.cairn.info/revue-participations-2019-2-page-57.htm

    https://www.cairn.info/revue-participations-2019-2-page-167.htm


    That being said I only a junior researcher so maybe there is so I might be missing something.
  • dimitri.courant
    On a connected topic, and for those interested, see:
    https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/57461/multiple-citation-styles
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