Upgrade StorageSeparate fields for title and subtitle
Wouldn't it be better to have separate fields for title and subtitle instead of only one field? Because in different citation-styles the delimiter between title and subtitle changes (e.g. some styles have a period between them, others have a colon, and some have a dash). With only one field you have to change all titles manually when you want to change the citation-style (or if somebody wants you to use other delimiters).
Moreover, the number of citation styles that actually require different title/subtitle delimiters is vanishingly small, even in a place like Germany which more commonly delimiters title/subtitle by period, so the payoff for such significant undertaking is significant.
Thank you for the idea. But you have to admit, that this is only a workarouns.
1. It is not very usable to have only the subtitle in the title-field and in the list of all titles.
2. What if a book has a title and a subtitle and a different shorttitle? E.g. handbooks often have a title, a subtitle and a common shorttitle, that everybody in this sector uses.
@adamsmith:
Of course, that is no simple switch, but a fundamental switch. But if you have a separate field for subtitles, people who want it all in one field, can still do so. And if you use both fields the became one in the document. But you still have the opportunity to change delimiters, etc. (E.g. our head of faculty wants subtitles in italics.)
E.g. Citavi distinguishes between title and subtitle and it works perfectly.
I believe that would be a great change for Zotero.
This is crucial for many users, because changing the separators for all titles in a publication by hand is not the purpose of a tool like Zotero.
It would be great, if there are any plans to realize that.
It's a very bad idea, to "hard-code" the separators between title and subtitle into that entry.
I know it's not ideal, but it's the temporary solution until the feature is implemented.
Here is the link with the image of how I did it.
https://ibb.co/Sd3CJDX
When you publish in different science-fields and/or different countries, you often have to use different separators between title and subtitle. Sometimes even in the same science-field in the same country, but in different publications.
To change all separators by hand for every usecase is certainly not the thing, that users expect from a literature-database.
There are (logical, bibliographic and practical) reasons, why title and subtitle have different names. If it would be the same (like Zotero handles it), they would have only one name.
So, Zotero should really separate title and subtitle. Not only for theoretical reasons, but also to give users an easy-to-use way to change separators between title and subtitle, without all that pesky work of changing every title by hand for every publication.
Are you asking about publications that have title and subtitle with no punctuation separator and only a new-line?
As @adamsmith pointed out above, Zotero's single field accommodates title and subtitle with a punctuation separator. Different conventions exist by publisher, nation, and discipline. Common separators include the colon, semicolon, period, and dash flavors. This is further complicated by the practice of some commercial databases to change the type of separator from what was used in the original publication. (I can only guess that this is done [along with article changes -- an/the/a] to help prove that a large number of records were copied to some other database in addition to their use of Mountweazels.)
Are you suggesting that you yourself will sometimes want to change the separator from what was used in the original publication? If so, I think that is a bad practice.
I can't speak for Zotero, but I don't think this is likely to be in CSL any time super soon.
I don't really care what the separator is (if I can find the cited document). But some professors (and TAs) at my university and referees of articles I've reviewed really do care a great deal. This is why I mentioned that some commercial databases make changes to the separator (for example, AgeLine and WoS). When I review, I check if the reference exists and if it supports the assertion. Particularly in nursing, some manuscript reviewers pay greater attention to the punctuation of citations than to the description of methods and results.
"Are you asking about publications that have title and subtitle with no punctuation separator and only a new-line?"
No, this is a question of the article itself and has nothing to do with Zotero. I'm talking about different needs in citation of articles or books, like others explained above.
@DWL-SDCA:
"To me, that complicates the issue of addressing the rules concerning upper case / lower case after the colon."
But often you have to change between different separators between title and subtitle without changing any letter-cases between upper-case and lower-case. So in most usecases this is no problem. And even if a change of separators would need to change the upcoming lowercase-letter to uppercase or vice versa: E.g. in Latex you can use scripting of Biblatex to solve that. But for this, Biblatex needs different fields. And even if you don't use Latex: the problem doesn't disappear, when Zotero has only one title-field. Yes, if different separators needs another upper-case/lower-case you still have to to this by hand (if you don't use Latex). But for the majority of usecases, where you only have to change separators between title and subtitle, but not the upper-case/lower/case, this would be gamechanging, if you don't have to change every title by hand for different publications.
And remember: for those people, who don't need different separators, there is no change; they can use the different fields without the need to change separators. More than that: They can even write title and subtitle in the title-field (like done before) and leave the subtitle-field empty, if they want to.
But for those people, who often have to publish with different separators between title and subtitle Zotero is almost useless, because nobody wants to change this every time by hand. For those people, different fields for title and subtitle would not only be a big advantage, but the one single thing that they can use Zotero at all.
So, nothing would change for users who don't need it, but for users who need it, this is
decisive.
I hope, it will be integrated in Zotero 7 in the near future. And who wants to stay with both titles in one field, can simply ignore the additional field.
See here:
https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/106088/
ex:
SMITH. John. *Creating things in Java*: a basic guide. Paris: Mypress, 2023.
but instead I have:
SMITH. John. *Creating things in Java: a basic guide*. Paris: Mypress, 2023.
* for bold style.
I think, to have two separate fields for title and subtitle should be on the highest-priority list. And it has zero disadvantages, because (as said before): who wants to stay with both titles in one field, can simply ignore the additional field.