APA Newspaper Article with BibLaTeX - incorrect date formatting

henrex
Hi

APA requires year + date + month when formatting the bibliography of a newspaper article item.

However, BibLaTeX does not show this data, because Zotero exports both "Journal Article" and "Newspaper Article" as "@article".

The way BibLaTeX has resolved this issue is to simply add an extra line:

entrysubtype = {nonacademic},

to nonacademic/newspaper/magazine article entries.

I would propose that Zotero should add this extra line per default in the BibLaTeX Export.
  • henrex
    Just as an example, a newspaper article should have the full date, such as:

    Mølsted, H. (2017, September 29). ...

    But the BibLaTeX export results in:

    Mølsted, H. (2017). ...

    The export simply needs an extra line (entrysubtype = {nonacademic}), telling BibLaTeX that this is a nonacademic article, which then renders correctly:

    @article{molsted_ingenioren_2017,
    entrysubtype = {nonacademic},
    date = {2017-09-29},
    ...
    ...
    ...
    ...
    }
  • bwiernik
    edited May 28, 2022
    If you are trying to write in TeX using Zotero, you should install the BetterBibTeX plugin and use its output formats. The built-in BibLaTeX export in Zotero is mostly intended as a data exchange format.

    (And note that if you are actually writing in Markdown not TeX, you should export to CSL JSON or CSL YAML instead.)
  • henrex
    I believe that when Zotero offers to export in "BibLaTeX format" then it is also a prerequisite to actually support standard functionality offered by said standard interchange format.

    The "entrysubtype" field is one such thing that BibLaTeX supports out of the box, cf. source code on Github, to differentiate between a Journal Article (@article) and a Newspaper/Magazine Article (@article + entrysubtype = {nonacademic},).

  • bwiernik
    If you are writing in TeX or Markdown, you should use the BetterBibTeX plugin. That is where detailed support for this writing workflow lives, particularly for fields that are not used as part of the standard BibLaTeX styles (of which entrysubtype is one)
  • maier.de
    Indeed. From the biblatex manual:

    This field, which is not used by the standard styles, may be used to specify a subtype of an entry type. This may be useful for bibliography styles which support a finer-grained set of entry types.

    While entrysubtype may be used in styles, it's not really a standard feature, at least there's no established set of subtypes. Where, for example, is nonacademic coming from?
  • adamsmith
    Is there any reason we shouldn't do this in stock BibLaTeX export, though? This seems pretty trivial if we can just do it for all newspaper and magazine articles?
  • maier.de
    Yes – basically because this is not supported by vanilla biblatex. entrysubtype={nonacademic} is used by biblatex-apa, but nowhere else.

    I think, though, that it would make sense to somehow support this: why not use something more generic? entrysubtype={article-journal} vs entrysubtype={article-magazine} vs entrysubtype={article-newspaper}. That would at preserve the distinction. And you can always use biblatex/biber data-sourcemaps to map that to something or biber's tool mode.

    OTOH, I wonder whether this is already possible with BBT (postscripts, and such). @emilianoheyns ?
  • emilianoeheyns
    if (Translator.BetterBibLaTeX) {
    switch (item.itemType) {
    case 'magazineArticle':
    case 'newspaperArticle':
    entry.add({ name: 'entrysubtype', value: 'nonacademic' })
    break
    }
    }
    I think, though, that it would make sense to somehow support this: why not use something more generic? entrysubtype={article-journal} vs entrysubtype={article-magazine} vs entrysubtype={article-newspaper}. That would at preserve the distinction. And you can always use biblatex/biber data-sourcemaps to map that to something or biber's tool mode.
    but given that most LaTeX users (including me) are pretty naive users, people wouldn't necessarily know how to use sourcemaps (I had forgotten about it), and that the ones who do know how to use it would likely map the relevant ones of those to nonacademic, I would propose to map it to nonacademic by default, and then a postscript could change it to the more specific ones.

    If someone can open an issue on BBTs github I can get on this, it's an easy change and I could open one myself, but I always prefer to have an active user of a feature to make sure it works in a real setting. Being on GH will also allow me to hook Nick Bart, who knows a ton about biblatex.
  • maier.de
    edited May 30, 2022
    Thanks for the postscript example!
    Regarding nonacademic. Again, this is rather specific. Windycity (a Chicago implementation) uses type ={newsmag} for the same thing. biblatex-chicago uses entrysubtype ={newspaper} and entrysubtype={magazine}. The good thing is that the distinction academic vs nonacademic seems to be same in these styles. They don't distinguish between magazine and newspaper articles.
  • emilianoeheyns
    I see. Too many style dependencies then, so this would remain a postscript.
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