University of Melbourne Harvard style - link to AGPS

scharing · May 15, 2023

Hi, I am looking after the reference management guide for the University of Melbourne. I would like to stop supporting Harvard style. The first step is to remove the 10 year old CSL from Zotero - it's not consistent with the Australian Government Publication Style Manual on which we base our current Harvard style. Is it possible to link the University to Melbourne Style to the AGPS style?

adamsmith · May 15, 2023

So link to this one? https://www.zotero.org/styles?q=id:style-manual-australian-government

scharing · May 15, 2023

yes please! Thank you.

damnation · May 15, 2023

Seems something is happening down under. We recently also switched the Monash author-date style to style-manual-australian-government.csl (see https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/103817/style-error-monash-university-harvard#latest)

However, can you link to documentation that describes this?

scharing · May 16, 2023

The only documentation we have is our Harvard style guide https://library.unimelb.edu.au/recite/referencing-styles/harvard, where we link to the Australian Government style. I am aware that Monash has made similar changes, and there is at least one other university moving away from supporting Harvard this year. We would prefer not to support Harvard at all as there is no manual and there are almost as many versions as there are universities using it. My requested change is the first step in us stepping away from supporting it.

adamsmith · May 16, 2023

To be clear, we're thrilled about this from the CSL perspective: university-specific Harvard styles are, to be blunt, a dumb and wasteful idea, and switching away from them to a standard freely & openly provided by the government is exactly the right thing to do, so happy to help.

scharing · May 16, 2023

:) thanks - music to my ears

damnation · May 16, 2023

PR submitted. Once that's "Merged" the old style will be gone and it'll point to AGPS. https://github.com/citation-style-language/styles/pull/6547

Note that "Harvard" just means Author-Date, so AGPS could also be called a Harvard style. I try to avoid that word though as it has lead to much confusion.