Incorrect bibiliography order

Hinack
Hi, I am using Zotero 5.0.95.1 with the MS Word plug-in. When building a bibliography with Springer - SocPsych (author-date) there will be mistakes in the order. For example I will end up with this order:

Wenneker, M., Köhl, J., van Leeuwen, P., Pham, K., & van Schaik, A. (2016). Control of postharvest storage rots of apples and pears in The Netherlands. Acta Horticulturae, 1144, 189–194. https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.2016.1144.27
Wenneker, M., & Thomma, B. P. H. J. (2020). Latent postharvest pathogens of pome fruit and their management: from single measures to a systems intervention approach. European Journal of Plant Pathology, 156(3), 663–681. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10658-020-01935-9

However, the appropriate order would be Wenneker (not in this example), Wenneker & one (here Thomma) followed by Wenneker et al., independent of year. So the order should be by the number of authors (one --> two --> many) followed by the issuing year. I also checked other citation styles but it sems like this issue appears with all citation styles. Can you help me somehow?

Kind regards
Hinrich
  • bwiernik
    The Springer style guide doesn’t give specific guidance on sorting of the bibliography, other than to say that the style generally follows the conventions of APA style. APA style does not distinguish between 2-author and more-than-2-author items in sorting—sorting is simply alphabetical by second author name, then third author name, etc. Typical alphabetical sorting practice in most journals also follows this convention—it makes retrieval easier for readers because it has one author list rather than several for each author.

    So, the style as written appears to be correct. Have you received guidance otherwise from the publisher?
  • Hinack
    Dear bwiernik,

    I did not receive other guidance from the publisher but from my supervisor. I have also checked recent paper from the publication of interest (European Journal of Plant Pathology; https://doi.org/10.1007/s10658-018-01640-8). Maybe the authors have not used the Zotero or Endnote? style but they have done the sorting in a manner as asked by my supervisor. So it seems that I have to take care of this problem myself and do the sorting by hand. Otherwise I have to try to convice him.
  • bwiernik
    To be frank, your adviser is advising a style that is very rare among social science journals and explicitly against the guidance of APA, the most widely used social science style guide. I would suggest asking them to follow the standard style of simply sorting alphabetically by names in order and not imposing further unnecessary style requirements
  • adamsmith
    FWIW, Zotero/CSL _can_ do what you're asking, the style for the American Geophysical Union, e.g., does this so you can look there.

    Springer SocPsych style, though, is explicitly based on APA, so we're going to keep it following APA sorting rules. I checked some articles in the journal and while they tend to sort two authors before multiple, the sorting overall isn't that consistent. I doubt anyone will care.
  • Hinack
    Ok thanks,

    I could also see that there is a tendency in the European Journal of Plant Pathology to sort two authors before multiple. Yet the journal encourages using the Springer SocPsych style. Seems a bit inconsistent to me. Anyway, I'll have to deal with this problem somehow. Many thanks at this point.
Sign In or Register to comment.