Nature-journal in-text cites all effed - what'm I doing wrong?

I'm writing a paper in MS Word in the Nature-Journal style and inserting citations as I write.

Nature articles have in-text numbered citations and then a list of referenced titles (endnotes or a small bibliography - I'm not sure what differentiates the two) at the end.

For starters, the Set Doc Prefs menu for Zotero won't let me choose between Footnotes and Endnotes (the buttons are grayed out) so the references are getting listed at the bottom of each page.

Second, the auto-generated citation markers Zotero is generating are roman rather than arabic numerals, and I can't find a way to change this.

Lastly, when I try to use the "Multiple sources" option to cite a few articles at once, Zotero is concatenating all of the references into one big reference and then assigning it a unique citation number, rather than simply citing the separate numbers that the sources should have been assigned (so instead of getting "...blah blah.1-3, 5" I'm getting "...blah blah.6", where 6 refers to a garbled paragraph that has the full entries for sources 1, 2, 3 and 5 all mushed together).

I've just started using the software, and it worked great for another paper I wrote that used APA formatting. Am I misusing it or is this a glitch?

thanks
  • Word is doing something odd here. The numbering style (roman versus arabic numerals) is controlled by Word, not by Zotero, so the route to fix that would be through the Word menus.

    It's odd, though, that the references are appearing as footnotes in the first place. Nature is an "in-text" style in Zotero, which means that it should insert the numbers into the text, with the references themselves appearing only in the bibliography that you insert separately (with Zotero) at the end of the document. In Open Office, at least, that is how Zotero 2.1.6 is behaving with that style here, on a quick check.
  • edited April 25, 2011
    Nature articles have in-text numbered citations and then a list of referenced titles (endnotes or a small bibliography - I'm not sure what differentiates the two) at the end.
    It's a (numbered) bibliography. This is key.
    For starters, the Set Doc Prefs menu for Zotero won't let me choose between Footnotes and Endnotes (the buttons are grayed out) so the references are getting listed at the bottom of each page.
    This is because Nature doesn't use notes at all. See above.
    Second, the auto-generated citation markers Zotero is generating are roman rather than arabic numerals, and I can't find a way to change this.
    Arabic numerals are what Nature uses, and it's what Zotero generates here for me.
    Lastly, when I try to use the "Multiple sources" option to cite a few articles at once, Zotero is concatenating all of the references into one big reference and then assigning it a unique citation number, rather than simply citing the separate numbers that the sources should have been assigned (so instead of getting "...blah blah.1-3, 5" I'm getting "...blah blah.6", where 6 refers to a garbled paragraph that has the full entries for sources 1, 2, 3 and 5 all mushed together).
    I don't see this at all. I get things like "3, 5, 6", which is correct. What version of Zotero are you using?
  • It's v 2.1.4.

    And I'm aware that Nature uses arabic numerals, which is why I'm trying to change the formatting.

    Actually, the error message that kicked off the problem was when I first tried to insert a bibliography. I had entered a few in-text citations (I can't remember now whether they were arabic or roman at that point) and I wanted to get the bibliography started, but I got the message:

    "The current bibliographic style does not define a bibliography. If you wish to add a bibliography, please choose another style."

    I assumed that, by "bibliographic style" the message meant "Citation style" (as it's referred to on the Doc Prefs tab) so I tried out a few different styles which seems to have... messed things up?

    Anyway, i just opened a fresh document and tried again to put a few citations into a line of text and then generate a bibliography. I got my arabic numerals back, but the same error message when I tried to put in the biblio.
  • this sounds weird - I'd suggest trying to "reset translators and styles" in the advanced tab of the preferences - my guess is something got corrupted somehow. That should fix things.
    (Note that this will delete/reset your styles and translators to the default - you'll have to re-install any styles from the repository. If you use custom styles not in the repository (that's highly unlikely and if you don't know what I'm talking about you're not) you should save those).
  • Thanks adamsmith.

    Just before I saw this message, I downloaded and installed the update to 2.1.6 (which didn't fix the bibliographic problem but did get me back to functioning arabic-numeral citations, incl. for multiple sources) and then found an old thread from someone who'd gotten the same error message ("The current bibliographic style...etc.") with the Public Library of Sciences style, and based on your suggested fix for that problem I went to the style page and downloaded/installed the Nature Journal style and... now it works.

    I just got Zotero a couple of weeks ago, and since I had the problem with 2.1.4 and 2.1.6 I wonder if it's at all possible that the version of the Nature Journal style that's bundled with the complete download is buggy in some way(?)

    At any rate, I'm all set now. Thanks all for the help.
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