suppress second author before `et al.'

annekebatenburg
In some of my citations, the name of the second author appears before the `et al.', e.g. `Rhee, Brennenkmeijer et al., 2006a' where it should be left out. How can I suppress the second author name?

I'm using 2.1b7, with the 3.1b1 Word plugin and the `copernicus'citation style.
  • fbennett
    Looks like disambiguation. Are there other references in the document for which Rhee is the primary author?
  • annekebatenburg
    Yes, there are more references to papers by Rhee. But it also happens for some papers for which there is no ambiguity possible (the only referenced paper by a particular author in my document).
    And anyway, according to the Copernicus Publications Reference Types (http://www.atmospheric-chemistry-and-physics.net/Copernicus_Publications_Reference_Types.pdf) the disambiguation should be done with a year suffix (which seems to work), not by second author...
  • adamsmith
    yeah - that looks correct in the csl 0.8 style you posted on the other thread - probably something going wrong with the way that's converted.
  • fbennett
    edited February 23, 2011
    Let's consolidate this discussion on the other thread.

    (Edit: Never mind ...)
  • fbennett
    On second thought, let's not consolidate these threads, they really are about separate issues. I shouldn't touch the keyboard before morning coffee, I really shouldn't.
  • fbennett
    I've been able to reproduce this in Zotero. It's not clear yet what the cause is, but with three references in a single citation, which are identical in the first name, but differ in the second and third, I'm getting the second name in the output. As you say, with the CSL 0.8 style code that you posted that should never happen.

    More particulars as I dig into this.
  • fbennett
    @annekebatenburg,

    More info on this behavior locally. I can only reproduce this under a narrow set of circumstances. (1) If I begin with a database having one reference with two authors, and I add that reference to a document, the citation comes out (correctly) with two authors connected by "and". (2) If I then go into Zotero and add one more author to the reference, and then (without closing the document) refresh the citations, I get the first two authors, plus "et al." in the citations, which is wrong, and the behavior you describe. (3) However, if I switch to another style, and then back to Copernicus, the citation comes out correctly according to the style (i.e. only the first author is listed, followed by "et al.").

    Is this the behavior that you are seeing -- ephemeral anomalies arising when the content of the database is changed for testing purposes, rather than persistent anomalies that show up even after the style is dropped and reselected (or after a browser restart)?

    This should probably be fixed in any case, but it will be useful to know if this is the exact cause of the behavior you're seeing at your end.
  • marionsd
    I'm having very similar (and random) problems with 2.1b7 that seem like they're just a bug.

    After disabling the disambiguation "add names" and "add given name" options in my style -- because I was getting them randomly, when they weren't appropriate -- and having the citations set to do just "Davis et al. 2007," e.g., no extra names, I shouldn't have any situation where a second name is added, even if it was actually helpful.

    But it does happen. Quite frequently and unexpectedly and not even consistently. Some citations get extra names, others don't, so I've been opening them all in the editor as I insert them, to check and remove the extra names as needed.

    And to answer the question above, this doesn't occur when a citation is changed while the document is active. It just... happens.
  • fbennett
    That's not good, and it will be fixed. But we'll need to work out a pattern to the behavior. Can you provide any further information? Alternatively, if I provide you with an email address, can you send along a copy of a (hopefully small) failing document, and an accompanying RDF export of the citations it contains?
  • fbennett
    Ha. I just checked my development code, in the place where I distinctly remember fixing this issue -- and the fix is not there. I must have had an old copy of the file lurking somewhere, and let it be overwritten sometime before the 2.1b7 release.

    I'll get a fix out right away, which will probably take care of this, when it comes through in the next release -- with apologies for the inconvenience this has caused, and thanks to our beta testers for this feedback.
  • fbennett
    I think I've gotten a bead on the problem. I'll be putting up a revision to the processor soon, which will work it's way into the trunk when Simon picks it up. He may ask people on this thread to test with the trunk version, in advance of the next release. As this is an erratic problem, and difficult to test for, feedback on updates from people who are actually experiencing it will be very helpful to the cause.
  • marionsd
    Happy to test it when you're ready! And thank you for taking care of it!
  • fbennett
    We'll see how it goes. I've been blind-sided by this issue, and I'm not absolutely certain that I've pinned down the cause. But the processor has been very heavily tested otherwise, and if this first attempt doesn't nail it, we will track it down. It's very important to me that this work reliably.
  • annekebatenburg
    I'd be happy to test it too.

    Just to confirm marionsd's observations, in my document the problem also persists when the style is dropped and reselected, in fact, the problem occurs in other styles as well. And indeed, some papers get the extra names, and others don't, and I haven't found a pattern in that yet.
  • fbennett
    @marionsd, @annekebatenburg,

    I've built a testing version of Zotero 2.1b7 that has the revised CSL processor in it. This is for testing only; it will not upgrade automatically; it's meant for testing, with a copy of your main database and the documents that are triggering the error, in a separate Firefox profile.

    There's no great secret about this version, but to avoid causing confusion I'd like to supply it just to the two of you, for the specific purpose of checking this bug. If you can mail me at the address biercenator //aat// gmail.com, I'll send you a copy.
  • annekebatenburg
    I've tried the test version, but after I tried the buttons a bit in the Word document somehow the edit window did not seem to respond anymore. I assumed it crashed, and I reinstalled the current beta again.
    The strange thing is, that after that I found out by accident that the problem was at least partly solved (maybe by the reinstallation, or maybe it was already like that before but not noticed by me). The second authors were still in the citations after refreshing, and even after dropping and reselecting the style, but I can now make the second author disappear for an individual citation by opening the edit window for that citation and just closing it (by OK) again.
    Hope that's a useful symptom...
  • annekebatenburg
    I just reinstalled the test version, and the behaviour seems the same as the current beta: the second authors do not disappear upon dropping and reselecting the style, but for individual citations it can be made to disappear by opening and closing the edit window.
    New citations don't get the second author.
  • fbennett
    @annekebatenburg,

    That sounds promising. The processor would not "taint" the existing citations, even though they are incorrect. If the problem corrects itself when citations are edited, this may be the fix we were aiming for. Keep an eye on it, and if the system again kicks up extra names on citations that have once been corrected, please let us know. If after working with the system for some time it seems to be stable, we can consider the bug as fixed. Here's hoping that we're headed in that direction.

    Thanks again for taking time to check this out.
  • IC11
    I'm having the same problem of random second author insertion in the standalone version with plug-in in Word 2003. Are there any workarounds? Are there any styles that this doesn't happen with? I'm using AGU (American Geophysical Union) at the moment. "Edit Citation" -> "OK" works to remove second author from some but not all citations; also these revert to the incorrect format if the document is Refreshed.
  • fbennett
    This was caused by a bug in the CSL processor that generates citations. It was fixed some time ago, so the fact you are experiencing it suggests that you are running an old version of the processor.

    I haven't checked all of the bundles, but the standalone client for Linux contains a processor version that predates the earlier posts in this thread by two weeks. Since the bug was first reported here, that looks like the source of your trouble. When a newer build of the standalone client becomes available, the problem will go away. Until then, your best bet is probably to run the mainstream version with the connector enabled.
  • IC11
    Alright, thanks!
  • despower
    Hello everybody. I know this is an old thread, but I'm having the same problem and I'm running the newest version of Zotero with the MSWord plugin. Any insight as to what I might be doing wrong?
  • adamsmith
    Listing additional authors before et al. is correct APA (and many other) styles to disambiguate author groups -- are you sure that's not the case here?
  • despower
    Ahhh - yes, that's correct. In this case there would be two versions of a Zakharov et al. with the same year. Sorry, I thought it was a bug. Thanks for the tip!!!
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