Hi,

I created a basic style for Ecology Letters and placed it in the csl subversion repository (ecology-letters.csl). It doesn't appear on the zotero styles website yet. If that part isn't automatic, could someone add it to the website.

The style could be classified as "works for me". The test cases I have tried all look correct and agree with the website for the journal, but there are undoubtedly cases that I have ignored. There is also one thing that I couldn't get to work: using the "accessed" date as the issued date for webpages if there is no issued date. As far as I know, what is in the style file looks correct to me, but it doesn't do what I expect. Other than that, it all looks correct to me.

What I have in the .csl should be functionally equivalent to what you put (at least that is my understanding):

<macro name="issued">
<choose>
<if variable="issued">
<date variable="issued">
<date-part name="year"/>
</date>
</if>
<else-if variable="accessed">
<choose>
<if type="webpage">
<date variable="accessed">
<date-part name="year"/>
</date>
</if>
<else>
<text term="no date"/>
</else>
</choose>
</else-if>
<else>
<text term="no date"/>
</else>
</choose>
</macro>

It first checks for issued and uses that if available. If not, it checks for accessed and then checks to see if we are dealing with a web page. If both of those are true, then it uses accessed, if not, it returns no date. But for some reason, the check for "accessed" is never true. Is this a bug or am I doing something obviously wrong?

It seems to be a bug in the current CSL processor:

http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/7316/books-and-retrieved-from-with-apa/?Focus=32495#Comment_32495

I have a revision to request for the Ecology Letters style. Everything in this style is accurate except for two things:

1) When there are two different citations that have the same first author and year, the in-text citations need to add letters differentiating, for example:

(Einstein et al. 1918a) for one of the papers and (Einstein et al. 1918b) for the other.

In current form the style adds the 2nd author's last name instead, which is frustrating because I must go in and change these manually.


2) When there are two authors with the same last name but different initials cited in different places in the reference list, all of the in-text citations add the first initials, so that, for example:

(Einstein 1918) becomes (A. Einstein 1918).

This is frustrating because I must remove these initials manually as they do not conform to the journal's style.

Can these changes be made please? Or direct me to a different style that matches Ecology Letters in these ways? Thank you.

Thank you very much for your prompt response. This did indeed solve the problems I described.

I have come across another issue with the (1918a),(1918b) labeling of same-year papers by the same author. When I have two papers that have the same first author and year but different coauthors, Zotero only assigns the a,b designation if the papers appear consecutively in the reference list. But if there is another paper in between the two in the list, with a different year (because the ref list is alphabetized so the name of the 2nd author determines ordering), then the a,b designation is not added.

Does this make sense? It is a specific circumstance but troubling when it arises (as it has for me).

Many thanks.

Ok, thanks. I am running Zotero 2.0.6, so that's probably not the problem. Like I said, this is a minor issue so I am happy to wait for 2.1.

The problems that you were able to fix were much more troublesome. Many many thanks, I wish I had posted to the forum sooner!