Zotero best practices (your best practices?) Recommendations?

aaronchall
OK, I'm going to put my reputation on the line and be willing to look stupid, but here's how for APA I'm using Zotero to cite:

Books: I'm getting the Title, Author, Place (first city I can identify in the front pages of the book usually), Publisher (first given publisher including slashes, but leaving out "a subsidiary of giant book maker"), Date=latest year I identify.

Book Section: I'm now making a regular book cite for collections, and then duplicating the entry and changing it to book section. This has the upside of letting me easily find the book by title in the title column, while not wasting too much time making extra entries. Changing the dupe to Book Section moves the title to Book Title and creates a new Title field. Downside might be that the editors names stay at the top of the authors in the database, and I can't move the authors around.
Question here: Should I and can I make the sections attached or subbed to the book?

Electronic journal database: (I think) I'm citing as a journal, even though APA wants a bunch of e-info, actually, now that I look at my journal cites so far, I have a lot of messy data, and I'm not sure I'm doing it right, and if it's going to come out clean when I do my bibliography with the writer plugin.

Monographs, industry surveys, collection of conference proceedings: I'm just getting what I can and what makes sense. How do I cite a paper that a college student circulated to his classmates? Is that a report?

For all of the above, I'm taking notes in the Abstract entry. Is that going to create problems for me in the future? Is it a problem now?

When I use the Writer Plug-in, and something's not quite right, how should I fix it? My professors, I think, want the full first names, while APA has the initials, can I modify my output? How? (Keep in mind, I'm a linux newbie and I'm not a programmer).

Please feel free to respond point by point, and tell me if I'm doing something wrong.
  • aaronchall
    Here's another question: when I'm wanting to cite an AP story I'm reading on Yahoo news, is it a webpage? a newspaper? something else?
  • aaronchall
    Anyone have thoughts?
  • adamsmith
    Electronic journal database: (I think) I'm citing as a journal, even though APA wants a bunch of e-info, actually, now that I look at my journal cites so far, I have a lot of messy data, and I'm not sure I'm doing it right, and if it's going to come out clean when I do my bibliography with the writer plugin.
    not sure I follow this - you need clean data for clean citations. Note that APA wants so called dois where they exist even for print sources.
    How do I cite a paper that a college student circulated to his classmates? Is that a report?
    I usually wouldn't cite that at all, certainly not as a valid academic source. If you have to,cite it as a manuscript.
    For all of the above, I'm taking notes in the Abstract entry. Is that going to create problems for me in the future? Is it a problem now?
    no, not really, but a bunch of translators import abstracts in the abstract field (that's what it's for after all...). Why not use child notes for, well, note taking? If not the extra field is another place.
    When I use the Writer Plug-in, and something's not quite right, how should I fix it? My professors, I think, want the full first names, while APA has the initials, can I modify my output? How? (Keep in mind, I'm a linux newbie and I'm not a programmer).
    fix it in your database or adjust your style. for the specific question, find this part in the csl
    <macro name="author">
    <names variable="author">
    <name name-as-sort-order="all" and="symbol" sort-separator=", "
    initialize-with=". " delimiter=", " delimiter-precedes-last="always"/>
    <label form="short" prefix=" (" suffix=".)" text-case="capitalize-first"/>

    and take out
    initialize-with=". "

    see here for simple instructions for changing styles
    Here's another question: when I'm wanting to cite an AP story I'm reading on Yahoo news, is it a webpage? a newspaper? something else?
    I'd go with newspaper article or webpage.

    A general note - this is mainly a tech support forum - questions about how to cite something should really be directed to you professors and/or TAs.
  • aaronchall
    I'm not really at the point where I just go to my professors or TAs anymore. I'm getting to where I'm going to be submitting to journals. Which is why I am so appreciative of your response. ESPECIALLY the csl! THANKS!
  • aaronchall
    Any other researchers here want to add their best practices?
  • aaronchall
    Just thought that I'd add that I proved to myself that Zotero automatically applies the periods to initials, (so confirming, just give initials without periods) and when stating the edition, giving a numeral (e.g. 4) is superior to typing, for example, "fourth" in the field.

    Thank you everyone who works on this program, it has worked marvelously.
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