Styles for Inclusion in 2.0 final

adamsmith
The following styles currently come with Zotero -
I thought the upcoming release of 2.0 final might be a good opportunity to think about which styles to "ship" with Zotero. There are two issues - which ones to include, and updating the relevant styles. My comments in italics

o American Medical Association
should be included - has some mistakes, though. Should be checked

o American Political Science Association
should be included - update from dev part of the repository and re-check - style is generally high quality, though

o American Psychological Association
should definitely included and be updated with the significantly corrected style in the dev section of the repository

o American Sociological Association
should probably be included. I've never seen anyone refer to this style, but it looks very accurate and since it's covered on Owl at Purdue I assume it's relatively common

o Chicago Manual of Style (Author-Date format)

o Chicago Manual of Style (Full Note with Bibliography)

o Chicago Manual of Style (Note with Bibliography)

o Chicago Manual of Style (Note without Bibliography)
I would probably take out "Note without Bibliograph" - I just don't see the added use of that - three CMOs should be enough. Styles are maintained by Elena and are as good as possible given Zotero limitations.

o Harvard Reference format 1 (Author-Date)
I'm not convinced, because the concept of a "Harvard Style" - which is really just a nickname for styles like APA, APSA, and ASA doesn't seem to make a huge amount of sense to me and creates confusion - we even had to create an FAQ on that

o IEEE
definitely include. High quality style

o Modern Humanities Research Association (Note with Bibliography)

o Modern Humanities Research Association (Note without Bibliography)
Only include one of those - namely the one with Bibliography, but update from the repository's dev section - it's substantially corrected.

o Modern Language Association
Definitely include. Has recently been updated

o National Library of Medicine
include, but urgently update from dev section of repository. The style is full of errors

o Nature Journal
Definitely include - I think the style works fine as is

o Vancouver
"Vancouver" is actually just a nickname for the National Library of Medicine style. This should be replaced by NLM and made a dependent style.


Other styles to add:
Suggestions
Bluebook Law Review
Council of Science Editors
American Chemical Society
Unified Style Sheet for Linguistics
Science Journal
  • migugg
    I generally doubt the helpfulness of styles shipping with zotero. In the real world, depending on a users discipline, he or she will exactly ever use one or two of these styles and the others are of no help at all and rather a distraction. If you are in Chemistry, law styles are a distraction and vice versa. I would thus rather suggest to keep the styles to an absolute minimum but rather push the long discussed better organisation of the styles repository.
    http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/9643/summary-of-styles/
  • migugg
    Also the quality of any style does not matter for inclusion, because in every use case, I do need a specific style, whatever its quality, and not a different style, even if it is of better quality.
  • RintzeRintze
    Even though I need journal-specific styles to format my references correctly in my manuscripts, I use the shipped styles quite often for quick-and-dirty generation of bibliographies (e.g. via Quick Copy) for cases where the style used isn't very important, e.g. mailing items to colleagues, or creating bibliography lists for my CV or for symposium abstracts. For stuff like that I find the current collection of standard styles that cover the spectrum (author-date, numeric, etc) quite useful.
  • migugg
    agreed, but I assume you still only use one or two of these, that reflect citation practices in your discpline anyway. Adamsmith's list now covers some 20 styles, and I doubt that this helps usability. How about including lets say 4-5 (one numbered, one author date, one footnotes, one full note with bib)?

    Currently, as a user, there are four ways to encounter style choices:
    a) When I ctrl-click on a selection and choose "export bibliography": In this case I am offered a selection of styles that I cannot modify at this step, and without style preview. I need to know which style i need and how it will look like. A greater variety of styles is likely confusing, rather than helpful.
    b) I start a new document in word/OO and I insert my first citation: I am asked which style to use, in the same way as above.
    c) I can choose "set document preferences" in a word/OO file that I have already written. Same as above.
    d) If I am not happy with the pre-defined selection in either of these cases or if I do not know about the styles, since I do not have access to a preview, I have to select the gears menu, select styles, and then select "get additional styles" to get to the styles repository, which is where I can get a preview (or access the styles repository on the web, but for this I have to leave zotero).

    In my view a)-c) gets confusing with too many styles of which I have no preview. In all three cases there should be a minimal preview function, or a short description of the styles, such as "IEEE - numbered style".
    While d) is too difficult to access at the moment. There should be a more direct way to get to the styles repository, for example it should be accessible from the Word/OO plugin "set document preferences" menu and possibly also directly from the gears menu, rather than through having to go to "preferences". I clearly use the styles menu far more often than I change settings for my webdav.
  • adamsmith
    my sense ist that the shipped styles are also a "marketing" tool - i.e. a first impression that Zotero makes. That's why I a) want them to be good and b) don't think there should be too few.
    Also I think undergrads without stringent style requirements for their papers might just go with a default.

    As for my list above - that's just suggestions - I suggest to remove 4 from the current list and suggest some possible replacements, but it's mainly to get the conversation started.

    As for the styles menu - I think some review would be good if feasible - but I'm not convinced your user experience is typical. I write everything I work on in one and the same style and only for specific submissions look at the style requirement - so that's not something I'd use a lot, no.
  • migugg
    well, I wasn't saying that the styles should not be good. Merely that in many cases, a user has to use a specific style and then he just gets what is there.

    I agree re: marketing tool, but this only indicates that the styles shipped with zotero should be good. It does not say anything about the number of styles. Rather, one could argue that some 20 styles might give users the misleading impression that these are ALL styles available.

    as for undergrads: again, their requirements, if not specific, can probably be dealt with some 5 styles, one numbered, one author date etc.

    As for my user experience, even if it is not "typical", I tried to describe all possible ways how you currently have access to styles. I do not know how one could have a different user experience. (And *how often* you use different styles clearly depends on how much you publish ;-).)
  • erazlogo
    edited January 30, 2010
    o Chicago Manual of Style (Note without Bibliography)
    I would probably take out "Note without Bibliograph" - I just don't see the added use of that - three CMOs should be enough.
    I agree. Another option would be to delete this style from Additional Styles as well. People can just use Full Note with Bibliography without actually creating a bibliography.
  • adamsmith
    OK - I think I'm coming around to what you're saying miggug - how about we aim for 10 included styles of high quality:

    APA
    MLA
    CMOS Full Note
    CMOS Note
    IEEE
    MHRA
    NLM
    either APSA or ASA
    Nature
    Bluebook

    That covers a broad range of fields - Humanities, Social Sciences, Sciences, Medicine, Engineering, Law - and has 3 numbered, 4Fn, and 3 author-date styles. I think 10 styles are a small enough number to deal with comfortably as a user.
    I'm still note sure how we would best advertise the repository, but you've got a point there. Maybe you're right and a dedicated menu item in the gears menu would be good. I somehow feel odd about including that in the word processor plugin, but that might be irrational?
    (And *how often* you use different styles clearly depends on how much you publish ;-).)
    pfff. show-off ;-).

    Also - Dan - does this discussion even make sense? Would you consider such a change?
  • mronkko
    How about including blank style that completely hides citations?

    http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/10884/blank-citations/#Item_2
  • mark
    I like the idea of including 10 high quality styles but we have to make sure that we avoid giving the impression that that's all there is — so this has to be coupled with an intuitive and fool-proof interface for quickly searching through the wealth of specific styles that's available.

    Ideally, this would be accessible from within Zotero. Whatever the implementation, it probably should be advertised in all places were users can select and view styles. Good models are the 'Get Addons' tab in the FF addons window and the 'Get more search engines' in the FF 'Manage search engines' interface.
  • migugg
    I agree with Mark. Everywhere where I am able to select a style, there has to be an option/a link to the style repository.
  • fbennett
    If quality (actually completeness) is an issue, I would probably drop Bluebook from that list, at least for the time being.
  • mmoole
    hello,
    i also second the point to more easily get to install more styles for the not experienced user. One of the things i do first is checking the preferences of anything i use, but normal users do not do that :-)

    When i want to insert a reference for the first time in a document, i get firstly to the "Document Preferences" window where i have to set the citation style. What does a not-so-techie user expect to find here - the styles he needs. Of course we cant include everything, so there should be a way to install new styles or to get to the window where the user directly can install new styles. This would be really nice. Essentially it just needs to be a button that is a link to the corresponding preferences pane or style repository. But in all, this would hinder the first possible frustration of not finding the correct style at the first try, i think. The decision of which style to use has to be made before even selecting the source of the first reference. And it would make the add-in more transparent because the user sees immediately how to extend zotero with more styles. :-)

    greetings
    mmoole
  • adamsmith
    bump - Dan - could you give a brief update if the ideas here are something you'd consider for 2.0 final or for 2.1?
    At a minimum, the updated styles for APSA, APA, and MHRA, and NLM mentioned in my first post should be pushed.
  • dstillman
    At a minimum, the updated styles for APSA, APA, and MHRA, and NLM mentioned in my first post should be pushed.
    That's all that can happen for 2.0. Nothing actually needs to be done—2.0 builds always get dev styles even if we don't push them, since the default styles are just symlinked in from the 'csl' directory—but we'll push them along with 2.0.

    Some of the other ideas (particularly making it clear from every place where you can select a style that other styles are available, or even having a "Get Add-ons"–style interface to install styles directly) can happen for 2.1.
  • adamsmith
    great, thanks for the update.
  • adamsmith
    I would like to bumb this for the 2.2 release - I really want to get rid of one of the MHRA styles, the unnecessary CMoS style and merge NLM and Vancouver. These quasi-duplicates for high profile styles create a lot of unnecessary work...
    My sense is that 2.2 is still a bit off, so there should be enough time to do this?
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