APA specifications for multiple authors, multiple years

mohan.singh
First, I offer general thanks to all zotero developers. I have a question about APA specifications for a problem I've run into. Here is an example bibliography to illustrate my problem. It has been set up to respect alphabetization:

AuthorA, AuthorB, & AuthorC. (2003a). Etc.
AuthorA, & AuthorC. (2004a). Etc.
AuthorA, & AuthorC. (2004b). Etc.
AuthorA, & AuthorC. (2005). Etc.
AuthorA, AuthorC., & AuthorD. (2003b). Etc.
AuthorA, AuthorD., & AuthorB. (2003c). Etc.

This leads to a rather curious distribution of letter suffixes which is necessary because the 3-author refs will all be cited as "(AuthorA et al., 2003...)" after the first in-text citation. (Perhaps I am missing something?) One way around this would be keep full author lists in such cases, but then we would run into a similar problem with long (>6) author lists which always involve "et al." in in-text citations. I don't have the APA manual, and have not been able to find a solution on line. What I have outlined so far is not really a zotero issue. However, whatever the APA solution may be, my zotero MS Word plugin currently does the following (I have copied the first and second in-text instances of 2 citations):

(Maryn, Corthals, De Bodt, Van Cauwenberge, & Deliyski, 2009; Maryn, Dick, Vandenbruaene, Vauterin, & Jacobs, 2009)

(Maryn et al., 2009; Maryn et al., 2009)

The second set of in-text citations is ambiguous. To summarize, I don't see any option apart from a,b,c suffixes, but as I illustrate above, these would lead to odd-looking reference lists and may be quite challenging to program. And I have no idea what APA has to say about this. Oh, the joy of author/year citation styles. I wonder how bibtex/natbib deal with this issue. I'm too tired to check tonight.

Thanks in advance for any ideas about this!
  • mohan.singh
    This is just some additional information showing what my zotero MS plugin 3.0a3 does very well. The extracts below are pasted from my document: first and second instances of citations followed by reference list. Note that zotero does a great job with identical author lists (the "2008, 2009a, 2009b", though "2009a,b" would be better than "2009a, 2009b"). The problem is with multiple refs that start with the same initial author but have different subsequent authors, and with the same publication year.

    (Maryn, Corthals, De Bodt, Van Cauwenberge, & Deliyski, 2009; Maryn, Dick, Vandenbruaene, Vauterin, & Jacobs, 2009; Maryn, Roy, De Bodt, Van Cauwenberge, & Corthals, 2008, 2009a, 2009b)

    (Maryn et al., 2009; Maryn et al., 2009; Maryn et al., 2008, 2009a, 2009b)

    Reference List:

    Maryn, Y., Corthals, P., De Bodt, M., Van Cauwenberge, P., & Deliyski, D. (2009). Etc.
    Maryn, Y., Dick, C., Vandenbruaene, C., Vauterin, T., & Jacobs, T. (2009). Etc.
    Maryn, Y., Roy, N., De Bodt, M., Van Cauwenberge, P., & Corthals, P. (2008). Etc.
    Maryn, Y., Roy, N., De Bodt, M., Van Cauwenberge, P., & Corthals, P. (2009a). Etc.
    Maryn, Y., Roy, N., De Bodt, M., Van Cauwenberge, P., & Corthals, P. (2009b). Etc.
  • fbennett
    mohan, maybe this is the kernel of your posts:
    ... my zotero MS Word plugin currently does the following (I have copied the first and second in-text instances of 2 citations):

    (Maryn, Corthals, De Bodt, Van Cauwenberge, & Deliyski, 2009; Maryn, Dick, Vandenbruaene, Vauterin, & Jacobs, 2009)

    (Maryn et al., 2009; Maryn et al., 2009)
    I've reproduced this (we reeeeally need a debug submission mechanism for style errors!), and you're right, it's not what should be happening; the processor should be putting a year-suffix on the end of the years. This happens because the processor decides on whether to apply the suffix by comparing the full (initial) form of the cites, rather than their subsequent form. This will be fixed in the next version of the CSL processor, which will debut in Zotero 2.1.

    Separately, on this item:
    Note that zotero does a great job with identical author lists (the "2008, 2009a, 2009b", though "2009a,b" would be better than "2009a, 2009b").
    CSL 1.0 and the new CSL processor will definitely be able to do this.
  • mohan.singh
    fbennett,
    Thanks so much! I guess I am part of the crowd eagerly awaiting CSL 1.0! Is there a forum to share thoughts with the CSL developers? I think it might be useful to make them aware of the same-initial-author, same-year reference issue which can lead to strange (and I believe, unavoidable) a,b,c suffix distributions in the reference list.
    -Mohan

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