Style Error:[Elsevier's harvard style (with titles)]

This originated as a modification of the Elsevier harvard style for publication in Industrial Crops and Products, but I now believe it to be an error.

Book titles, either alone or as the book title associated with a book section, are not forced to title case. I suppose this isn't an issue if book titles are entered in title case, but I'm finding that a lot of the chapter citations I download have the book title in sentence case. At any rate, I think there's no question that title case for books is correct for this style, based on the documentation listed in the Harvard style itself (http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/405853/authorinstructions#68000 Third example under "reference styles").

I believe that this can be changed relatively simply by changing Line 46 to <text text-case="title" variable="container-title"/>

This would also change conference titles to title case, but I believe this to be appropriate as well.

As a separate issue, this style also disambiguates "same year, same first author" journal articles by listing the second author if the author lists are different. I hesitate to call this an error, since this circumstance is not directly addressed by the instructions for authors in the Elsevier journals I've seen. The instructions state only: "More than one reference from the same author(s) in the same year must be identified by the letters "a", "b", "c", etc., placed after the year of publication." This really doesn't address what is meant by "same author(s)" (e.g., exact same list, same authors in any order, or same first author), but as there is no mention of adding a second author, I would be in favor of removing disambiguate-add-names="true" from line 213. I'd also be interested in hearing if anyone knows of a centralized style guide for this style from Elsevier, as the boilerplate author instructions really don't cover all circumstances.

I'd also like to have a dependent style added for "Industrial Crops and Products" based on this style. (If it is more appropriate to start another thread, I can do that.)
  • thanks - I'll take care of the dependent style asap, might be a couple of days.
    As for title case in containter-title - I tend to agree, so I'll add that to the Harvard style.
    The final issue I'm not sure - adding names is quite common for disambiguation so I'm less sure here, ideally someone would find an example from an Elsevier journal that goes either way.

    Most journal styles don't have a good style guide, the Elsevier one is better than average if anything, but yes, that's unfortunate.
  • Thanks for taking care of those things.

    You're right about the disambiguation--that is common elsewhere, it's just not explicit in these journals. If I find an example either way, I'll report it here, but, of course, its fairly uncommon. I only had it come up once writing a review article containing about 150 references, and the articles in question had the same three authors, but with #2 & #3 in reverse order, which is what sent me down this rabbit hole. In that case you get A, B, et al. and A, C, et al., which seemed silly to me, but who knows?

    For an independent journal, I'd contact the editor, but clearly the citation formatting decisions are not occurring at the journal level, as these journals have exactly the same language in their instructions to authors. The instructions do link to Endnote and Refman styles, which one would assume would be right, but I don't have either piece of software to check them.
  • also, from experience, I wouldn't expect Endnote styles to be right when it comes to details... I'm not even sure endnote is capable of these types of distinctions.
  • OK - added dependent style and title case - I'm still happy to change disambiguation if someone finds anything relevant.
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