Why my style shows 'author et al' only for some in bibliography?

Can anybody help me why my style shows 'author et al' (it supposed to show all authors list instead) in the bibliography ONLY FOR A COUPLE of references, while all others are normal (with all authors list).

any wrong in database?
Awaiting replies...
  • Which style, which Zotero version, which system, some information about the references themselves ...
  • style: Harvard reference style 1
    Zotero: 2.0
    OS: Win XP
    References (mall functioned): (they are supposed to show all the authors names)

    Anbu, P. et al., 2007. Optimization of extracellular keratinase production by poultry farm isolate Scopulariopsis brevicaulis. Bioresource technology, 98(6), 1298–1303.

    Anbu, P. et al., 2008. Extracellular keratinase from Trichophyton sp. HA-2 isolated from feather dumping soil. International Biodeterioration & Biodegradation, 62(3), 287–292.
  • The copy of the Harvard 1 style file that I have here declares that if there are three names, they should be truncated with et al. The second article above has five authors (haven't checked the other one). So it looks like it's working as expected. If you want all of the authors listed, you can change the style to let it do that. You can find out more about how to do that for Zotero 2.0 styles here.
  • Oh thank you very much. It worked. I edited 'et-al-min' value in bibliography. It worked.
    thank you very much.
  • Excellent! Glad to hear it's working for you.
  • Oooh, am sorry I over looked. It doesnt work. this is the change I made (changed the value in the "et-al-min")
    <bibliography>
    <option name="hanging-indent" value="true"/>
    <option name="et-al-min" value="10"/>
    <option name="et-al-use-first" value="1"/>
    What should I do. Please help me, I overlooked and thought it was working, but actually not, the references still show et al.
    Please help me out.
  • The use of et al. is controlled separately for citations and the bibliography. Try making the same change in the citation section.
  • But at leas the original problem was about the bibliography.
    Are you testing this in the test panel?
    chrome://zotero/content/tools/csledit.xul
    Your style should work correctly, we'll need more detail to tell what's going wrong.
  • ya, when I load the style to test, its showing 'No references selected in Zotero.' in the below pane.
    Whats wrong?
    And I am getting problem for only the above cited references, while all others with more than 4 references still have been shown correctly.
  • edited February 7, 2011
    'No references selected in Zotero.'
    means just that - you need to select references in Zotero for the test panel to work - preferably those that aren't working correctly in your document.

    edit: Also, we're really guessing around here - it would be helpful if you just tried out some things on your own: Different citations styles, same citation style, different document, checking how many authors the paper has etc. - you can do all these things very quickly, it's much faster if you just get a sense of what's going on by playing around a bit than if we have to figure it out with very limited information.
  • yes, I selected a reference and tried in test pane. Its showing correctly.
    Then I went into my document and tried refresh. Still like that.
    Then I removed those faulty citations and inserted it again, and inserted bibliography again.
    IT WORKED!!! This time no more overlooking. I checked twice. IT WORKS!!!
    Thank you guys, for patient sharing. Really sorry for eating up of your time.
    Thank you very much.
Sign In or Register to comment.