Ability to see the key Zotero will use for disambiguating multiple same author, same year articles?

simon50000
Hi,

I was just wondering if there is any way to see in advance the key Zotero will append to the year when disambiguating multiple articles by the same author and same year when outputting bibliographies of Harvard type or similar.

The reason I ask is that much writing & note taking occurs prior to exporting any bibliography (the bibliography may yet expand), but I'd still like to be able to reference something fully.

I realise that in order to achieve this any appendages to the dates ('a', 'b', etc) would not necessarily end up in alphabetical order - I reckon this would be a price worth paying for the ability to always reference unambiguously.

(I apologise if this has been fully discussed elsewhere, I couldn't find any threads dealing with precisely this issue).

Many thanks

Simon
  • ajlyon
    No, this isn't going to happen, since the suffixes are applied in the citation processor (citeproc-js), and Zotero proper doesn't even know what the suffixes will be ahead of time. This is why writing using the word processor plugins for Word and Libre/OpenOffice is more efficient, or using the RTF scan functionality-- all of these approaches will put the correct suffixes on, and update them as necessary.
  • simon50000
    Okay, cool, thanks for your reply.

    I think the issue is that I reference works in places where I will never have a bibliography, and so never have the full information - in effect, I'd like the ability to make references directly to my Zotero library, with the Zotero library itself being the bibliography.

    For example, I create notes in Zotero which reference the other works. A note on one article saying "So-n-so (2001, 32) said blah," for example. Or notes created in places like Evernote. Even in my standard note-taking, I don't expect to insert a bibliography in every file I create for note taking.

    I can solve the main issue by using the Related field though I think, and inserting bibliographies everywhere I take notes. Not especially clean, but it would work.
  • ajlyon
    I use related for most of this. If you are using Word or Open/LibreOffice, you can insert citations and never create a bibliography, then just copy-and-paste those citations into a different document, and they'll work fine after being copied.
  • simon50000
    My issue was this: suppose I have a notes file in which I want to include some citations, but in my library there are two references which match the author and the date. I wouldn't then be able to tell. These notes wouldn't typically be incorporated into any other file, and, being just my own notes, I wouldn't typically add a bibliography. I'm content knowing I have the reference in my library. The problem being the ambiguity. But it's no real bother to add a bibliography into each and every notes file, and like you said, this is more efficient anyway. It's just that this solution doesn't work for places like Evernote, emails, and the notes inside Zotero (unless one wants to start putting bibliographies everywhere which seems a little overkill).

    The Related feature is really sweet though, and pretty much makes this a non-issue.

    Many thanks!
  • adamsmith
    The alternative would be to use something like Chicago - Note style for notes (the citation, not the bibliography), which will include a title, but not much more in a citations - that would in all likelihood be unambiguous.
  • simon50000
    Ah yeah, that never occurred to me, thanks!
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