APA 6th style specifies that when a work has more than seven authors, you should list the first six authors, followed by the three periods (ellipses), followed by the name of the last author, e.g.:
Gilbert, D. G., McLennan, J. F., Rabinovich, N. E., Sugai, C., Plath, L. C., Asgaard, G., … Boutros, N. (2004)
The Endnote APA 6th style does not do this. Anyone know of any workarounds? Is there a working version of APA 6th to download?
Thanks!
In the Comments and Limitations in the EndNote APA6th style it says:
“The 6th Edition of the style guide includes a very unique formatting option for authors in section 6.27 of the manual. When a reference includes more than eight authors the first six authors’ names are inserted, then an elipses (…) followed by the last authors name. EndNote is currently unable to format authors in this way, however, our development department is working on a solution.”
I think we should all be writing to APA to complain about the ridiculous innovations in the 6th edition.
I agree with John. This change in APA style looks like coming from a big ego of senior authors, complaining their names are not listed when authors are more than 7 or 8. But what is the reason for the cut-off at 7th or 8th? Do they think the third author is more important than 9th author? No way. Obviously, they thought the last author is more important than 9th author, so we should list.
Is this to cut a few lines in the biblio? If they meant space saving effect, then why not list just first and the last author? Why include the second to 7th? If I really want simple and space saving reference, I would list just first (and equal contributing) author, then everybody else is lumped as et al.
In this digital publishing era, cutting a few authors between 7th and the last by doing (…) doesn’t save anything. They really should say “list all authors”, if senior authors always want their names listed. John is right: it’s just ridiculous innovation. Here’s my proposal: make the author list circular, so that there aren’t first or last author! Then, I’d support EN team to make such an output style… I know it’s going to be hard !?
I’m just tired of whole thing about this “order of authorship”, by looking at the reference line, saying “you are in the middle”, “you are the first”, or “you are the last”, etc etc etc. Instead, I welcome the recent trend detailing each author’s contribution to the study. There are so many cases authors in the middle contributed a lot, and vice versa: authors in the middle didn’t do anything to the paper. I think that should be the criteria to “cut them out” and “save space”. Not simply by the order in the line, like 7th or 8th.
I stop here before I destroy my day with frustration… Anyway, EN can do the (…) thing. That’s the bottom line.
Have a nice weekend.
Best wishes,
Message Edited by myoshigi on 10-23-2009 04:18 AM