Modify NLM to be author-year?

bkuczenski
Hi,

I need a style that is basically identical to National Library of Medicine, except uses author-year cites with a bibliography that is sorted alphabetically. Is there an easy way to do this?

It's for the journal Resources, Conservation, and Recycling. Style notes here:
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/503358/authorinstructions#68000
  • adamsmith
    edited December 3, 2009
    yes - basically what you should do is to take the "citation" section from another style (APA, Harvard, APSA) that looks like you want it and paste it into NLM. Then you'll probably also have to paste in the macros that style uses in the section (most likely "year-date" and "author-short")
    and add, to the bibliography section
    the entire
    <sort>
    </sort>
    passage from the style your copying.
    See here for rought instructions on style changes
    http://www.zotero.org/support/csl_simple_edits
    I know this is very brief in terms of instructions, so if you can't follow a specific step, just ask.
  • bkuczenski
    holy moly, that basically worked!

    Now, if I may prevail upon you to help me troubleshoot- I set the options "disambiguate-add-names" and "disambiguate-add-givenname" to false; then I tried deleting them altogether from the citation section; but it is still generating citations with first initials (or full first names) in cases of apparent ambiguity. (in fact, there is no ambiguity, since e.g. MK Patel and Martin Patel both refer to the same author). Is there another option or key that controls this behavior?

    thanks for the speedy response.
  • adamsmith
    no, deleting the "disambiguate-add-givenname" line should do the trick, I have that working for me and I don't know why it's not for you - sometimes you "crash" the style when you work in the csledit window and then changes stop showing - start with your fixed style and then just delete that one line and see what happens.

    Also, the behavior will go away for all styles if you adjust the author's first name to be the same for all entries in the database - that's probably a good idea anyway.
  • bkuczenski
    Thanks for your help. I just fixed the names in my database. Also, changes seem to matriculate better if I switch to another style and then switch back, rather than 'refreshing' from the toolbar.

    In all, I am impressed with the CSL functionality. (any plans to add "export style to BST"?)

    best wishes.
  • adamsmith
    glad to help - would you mind making the style available? Just post it somewhere and I'll upload it to the repository.
    ( any free upload service will work, I use gist.github.com , create a "Public Gist")
  • bkuczenski
    ok, it's at http://ocean.301south.net/stuff/rcr-style.csl
    beware, there is at least one bug involving a double-space after the title in some book-type publications. I don't know enough to debug it on the fly.

    Also, the journal calls for collapsed page numbers (e.g. 284-7) but I don't think csl supports it?
  • bdarcus
    In all, I am impressed with the CSL functionality. (any plans to add "export style to BST"?)
    No, but I (the author of CSL) would certainly encourage such an effort from third-parties.
  • adamsmith
    no, as you rightly say, collapsed page numbers aren't supported.
    I'll have a look and put it up later.
  • fbennett
    Also, the journal calls for collapsed page numbers (e.g. 284-7) but I don't think csl supports it?
    Like a lot of other things, this will be supported in the upcoming version of CSL, which should start appearing in Zotero sometime early next year. But for now, page numbers don't collapse, as adamsmith says.
    In all, I am impressed with the CSL functionality. (any plans to add "export style to BST"?)
    I believe that some of CSL's capabilities (such as disambiguation) are not found in BibTeX, so there would have to be compromises. As the CSL processor can now be run independently of Firefox and Zotero (as citeproc-js), it might make more sense to build a BibTeX clone that is driven by CSL, and a corresponding LaTeX package, and just use the styles natively.
  • adamsmith
    thanks Brandon - the style is up - I fixed the double spaces that I spotted quickly.

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