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Citing Electronic Journals with Individually Paginated Articles

There are several good online journals that publish articles that are paginated separately from each other, rather than running the pagination continuously through a given issue (or volume). Just a couple are the HTS Teologiese Studies and Scriptura (at least in recent volumes).

AltTypewriter by Pereanu Sebastian

I’ve tended to treat these as though they all appeared at the beginning of a given issue (all starting with page “1”). But, SBL Press has clarified that this isn’t their most preferred way to treat this situation.

For articles in online journals that aren’t paginated in series, the preferred note form for the first reference to this type of article is:

[Author name], “[Title],” [Journal] [Journal volume] ([Journal volume year]): art. [Article number in the journal volume], [“p.” or “pp.” according to whether one or multiple pages is cited] [Page number], [Full DOI URL as a live link].

Thus, one example would be:

Ntozakhe Simon Cezula, “Waiting for the Lord: The Fulfilment of the Promise of Land in the Old Testament as a Source of Hope,” Scr.(S) 116 (2017): art. 3, pp. 1–15, http://dx.doi.org/10.7833/116-1-1304.

Subsequent references are constructed in the same way as they would be for any continuously paginated journal article.

To get the initial citation above from this bibliographic record, I had to adjust the default Zotero output for the SBL style by: (a) making “.3” into “art. 3,”—although this article isn’t in an “issue,” this seemed the best way to store it in the database—(b) adding “pp.” before the page references, and (c) adding “, http://dx.doi.org/10.7833/116-1-1304” after the page reference.

The corresponding bibliography format would be:

Cezula, Ntozakhe Simon. “Waiting for the Lord: The Fulfilment of the Promise of Land in the Old Testament as a Source of Hope.” Scr.(S) 116 (2017): art. 3, pp. 1–15. http://dx.doi.org/10.7833/116-1-1304.

For additional information, see both Electronic Journals with Individually Paginated Articles and HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies on the SBL Handbook of Style blog.

I wonder if there may need to be a new item or data type created in Zotero to support constructing this type of citation without this additional massaging.

Or, do you other Zotero users have other insights about ways of getting closer to output above with the software and the SBL style as they stand?

Update: Brenton Wiernik suggested the following excellent workaround via Twitter.

In the Twitter discussion above, the URL I mention should be the DOI URL. But, Twitter has presented a shortened version automatically.

Discussion of this citation situation is also now pending in the Zotero forums.

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Publication Year Ranges in Zotero

At present, Zotero’s “date” field doesn’t properly handle publications made over a range of years (e.g., 1950–1960). Instead of including the full range in the corresponding note or bibliography entry, only the first year of the range would be presented (e.g., 1950).

There is, however, a workaround that depends on entering the following syntax in an item’s “extra” field:

issued: [first year]/[last year]

Thus, for example, if the extra field has

issued: 1950/1960

Zotero would properly output a range of publication dates “1950–1960.” According to the Zotero forums, “better support for various date formats in the Date field itself is planned,” but there hasn’t been any indication of when this might be forthcoming. Until then, this workaround should prove immensely useful for these kinds of situations.

For other discussion of Zotero, see these posts.

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Zotero 5.0

The next major release of the Zotero bibliographic management system is now available. Zotero should update automatically for most users, but anyone wanting to go ahead and get the latest version can download it from Zotero’s site to install over a prior version. For discussion of what’s new in this version, see:

For other discussion of Zotero, see these posts.

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Zotero forum thread on commas, periods, and closing quotation marks

I’ve recently had a discussion over at the Zotero forums that brought to light a couple interesting points that I hadn’t been aware of:

  1. There’s currently in beta a major update to Zotero 5.0, which includes several important feature changes. The beta isn’t quite ready for prime time yet but should be “very soon.” Included in this update is the new Citation Style Language (CSL) processor that should remedy the comma and period placement issue in the forum thread.
  2. Frank Bennett has provided an updated CSL processor that can be installed in a current Zotero 4 version via the Propachi Vanilla plugin.

For additional discussion of Zotero here, see this tag.

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Linking Zotero to Logos

The Logos Talk blog has addressed integration with Zotero a couple times (1, 2). Another helpful way to connect the two platforms is by using Zotero’s “attach link to URI” feature.

The option can be found via the attachment menu or by right-clicking a particular item in Zotero. The option allows users to specify a name (if desired) and link (i.e., URL) to a given location.

This feature in Zotero can become even more useful when paired with Logos’s ability to export a URL that will open a given resource, even in the desktop version of the software. So, for instance, https://ref.ly/logosres/bdf will open Blass-Debrunner-Funk. Or, https://ref.ly/logosres/dichebrew will open the Dictionary of Classical Hebrew.

Adding these links in Zotero also has the helpful benefit of indicating which resources in Zotero you have in Logos. I’ve occasionally gone hunting in the library or submitted an inter-library loan request, only to find that—buried amid everything else in a previous Logos base package upgrade or library expansion—I already had the resource there.

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Full-height Footnote Numbers in Microsoft Word

Microsoft Word ties footnote anchors in the main text and footnote numbers at the start of footnotes to the same style. Consequently, it’s difficult to get full-height footnote numbers followed by a period (cf. Chicago Manual of Style, SBL Handbook of style).

That being said, the process discussed at Word MVPs does still seem to work with Word 2016. If it’s desirable to have the note number followed by a period and a space rather a tab character, the following modified Visual Basic macro code should do the trick:

ActiveDocument.Footnotes.Add Range:=Selection.Range
With Selection
.Paragraphs(1).Range.Font.Reset
.Paragraphs(1).Range.Characters(2) = ""
.InsertAfter "." & Space(1)
.Collapse wdCollapseEnd
End With

Unfortunately, it doesn’t immediately seem feasible to intercept Zotero’s insert citation macro, and that macro doesn’t appear to be tied to this particular function in Word. So, an update to what Word runs for the InsertFootnote command won’t be triggered by Zotero’s InsertCitation macro. If anyone has suggestions about how to do so, however, those are certainly welcome.

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Zotero 4

Image representing Zotero as depicted in Crunc...
Image via CrunchBase

I’ve just now noticed, but a stable release of Zotero 4 became available earlier this week. This release includes a substantial number of updates over previous versions. For highlights, see here, or peruse the whole change log.

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Small Caps in Zotero

The SBL Handbook of Style, 1st ed., suggests several abbreviations that involve small capital letters (e.g., §8.2). Zotero’s rich text markup will support the use of small capitals in a citation’s prefix or suffix fields. Zotero will turn text into small capitals if the text is enclosed by:

<span style=”font-variant:small-caps;”> and </span>

Or, apparently also the simpler:

<sc> and </sc>

In the SBL Handbook of Style, 2nd ed., the use of small caps looks to be restricted to Sumerian logograms (§5.5).

For more information on this Zotero feature, see this forum discussion and the general list of rich text formatting options available for Zotero citations.

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On the Web (February 9, 2013)

On the web: