Syntax to Accommodate Paper & Electronic Documents

[chick]

I’m tweaking my EndNote APA 5th output style so it accommodates electronic document formats but am puzzling over the syntax needed to address the “Report” output style and would appreciate any suggestions.  For brevity, I’m just showing the last line of the reference but the full syntax is listed at the end of the message.

SYNTAX NEEDS TO ADDRESS 3 SITUATIONS:

1.  Where the reference has a URL needs to be stated this way:

     Retrieved from National Center for Education Statistics: http://nces.ed.gov/pubs/2006/2006483.pdf

2.  Where the reference has a URL and needs to be stated this way:

     Retrieved from http://www.nea.org/he/aboutthestudy.pdf

3.  And where the reference is paper-based (no URL) so the phrase “Retrieved from” and the URL is omitted

My sample syntax is shown below (asterick represents the “link adjacent text” command):

     Retrieved from|*Department/Division|*URL

The syntax works only if the reference has a URL.  Otherwise if it’s paper document, the syntax causes the 2-word phrase “Retrieve from” to appear in the output.

Thanks for the time and help.

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Here’s the entire Report output format (bold indicates field name; underscore indicates blank space):

Author._( Year ).__ Title _|._(| Type |Report_No.\ *Report_Number |)._|\ *City :*I nstitution |.*Retrieved_from|\ *Department/Division |\ *URL

[johneast]

I think you need to remove the vertical bar after Retrieved from.

But you will have to ensure that you only have data in the Department/Division field of your references in cases where you wish to give a link to that organisation’s website.

And don’t forget that Department/Division is an author field, so the normal rules apply: put a comma at the end of a corporate name.

[chick]

@johneast wrote:

I think you need to remove the vertical bar after Retrieved from.

 

Thank you for the suggestion and other tips.  I removed the vertical bar which then fixes situations #1 and #3 but not #2.  So now if the report has a URL, the URL is listed but is not preceded by the requisite “Retrieve from”.

I’m thinking of adding a dummy field that would just hold a blank space to trick the syntax into including or omitting the Department/Division field regardless whether that field holds an entry or not. 

Hope there’s a more elegant solution available.

[johneast]

This seems to work for me (the asterisk represents a non-breaking space):

Author (Year). Title| (|Type|*No.*Report Number|)|.*City|:*Institution|.*Retrieved*from*Department/Division:|*URL|.

[chick]

@johneast wrote:

This seems to work for me (the asterisk represents a non-breaking space):

 

Author (Year). Title| (|Type|*No.*Report Number|)|.*City|:*Institution|.*Retrieved*from*Department/Division:|*URL|.

Thank you for your time and persistence in helping me resolve this puzzle.  I tried your syntax and it works perfectly for reports having urls (situations #1 and #2 described in my original posting).  As for paper-based reports (no urls), the word “Retrieve” appears in the reference - but that’s one word less than the original 2-word “Retrieve from” phrase  my original syntax was generating, so your version may be heading in the right direction.  I’m not sure why I’m not getting the same results as you so will need to do further checking.

 

On a side note, thanks for your prior postings about the APA Style Guide to Electronic References (2007) which is helping  me to tweak my output style reference templates.

[john_arnold]

We have amended our APA style’s Report template to:

Author._(|Year|,*Date|)._Title|_(|Type|*No.*Report Number|)|.*City|:*Institution.|.|*(Document Number)|*Retrieved from*Name of Database*database.|.*Retrieved from*URL

This accommodates, e.g.

APA publication manual, examples 42 and 43 - Document Number after publisher; example 48 requires a date, not just a year

APA style guide to electronic references, example 30 - URL; example 36 - include the organisation in the URL field

Including organisation in URL field has two disadvantages

 - may be inappropriate if another style is used later

 - URL cannot be accessed from EndNote directly

so John East’s solution of using Department/Division field for the organisation’s name is attactive.

We are using EndNote X1.

[chick]

@john_arnold wrote:

We have amended our APA style’s Report template to:

 

Author._(|Year|,*Date|)._Title|_(|Type|*No.*Report Number|)|.*City|:*Institution.|.|*(Document Number)|*Retrieved from*Name of Database*database.|.*Retrieved from*URL

 

This accommodates, e.g.

APA publication manual, examples 42 and 43 - Document Number after publisher; example 48 requires a date, not just a year

APA style guide to electronic references, example 30 - URL; example 36 - include the organisation in the URL field

 

Including organisation in URL field has two disadvantages

 - may be inappropriate if another style is used later

 - URL cannot be accessed from EndNote directly

so John East’s solution of using Department/Division field for the organisation’s name is attactive.

 

We are using EndNote X1.

Thanks for the information which helps extend my report template to accommodate document numbers and database retrieval.  I concur about the URL field and prefer that it be used for that purpose.

John East’s syntax (below) addresses the NCES name and URLs issue:

Author (Year). Title| (|Type|*No.*Report Number|)|.*City|:*Institution|.*Retrieved*from*Department/Division *URL|.

But now when there’s a paper report (i.e., no URL), the words “Retrieve from” appears in the reference (below):

Example

Sax, L. J., Astin, A. W., Korn, W. S., & Gilmartin, S. K. (1999). The American college teacher: National norms for the 1998-98 HERI faculty survey. Los Angeles, CA: Higher Education Research Institute. Retrieved from 

If there are any suggestions about how to tackle the syntax for print-and-electronic versions (with exception for NCES reports), I’d appreciate your time and help.

[chick]

@chick wrote:

 

John East’s syntax (below) addresses the NCES name and URLs issue:

Author (Year). Title| (|Type|*No.*Report Number|)|.*City|:*Institution|.*Retrieved*from*Department/Division*URL|

 

I’m starting to think the best way to address the paper-and-electronic reports along with the APA 5th requirement of inserting “National Center for Education Statistics” between the “Retrieved from” and URL fields for NCES reports may be to assign a custom field to hold the URLS corresponding to the NCES reports.  This way: 1) the Department/Division field (which contains the NCES full name) is linked only with the customized URL field and will then be omiitted when the Department/Division field is empty, and 2) the “Retrieved from” phrase will be omitted when there’s a paper report.

There may be a better solution but in the interim, this one works.

Thanks to John East and John-Arnold for their time and assistance.

  

[leanne]

Why not have two different reference types, with two different bibliography templates?

[chick]

@leanne wrote:
Why not have two different reference types, with two different bibliography templates?

That’s always an option and is one that the manual has mentioned for dealing with the assorted APA style variations…  But it seems rather inefficient to have two templates (and corresponding two reference types) to distinguish paper from electronic formats for basically the same reference type.  Tweaking the syntax offers the best option for me rather than creating two of every reference type that I use in my research.

[john_arnold]

Further regarding two separate reference types to try to accommodate organisation names appearing/not appearing in the APA retrieval statement: This is not just an issue for Reports, but in fact with pretty much any reference type that is retrieved via the Internet. Personally I think the lack of any if-then syntax in EndNote output styles precludes EndNote coping well with the complexities of a referencing style such as APA.

I’ve had a bit of a play with using the Department/Division field, but can’t see how it works if the reference doesn’t have an organisation name in the retrieval statement (which is the commonest situation).

Apart from somewhat munting the URL field by including the organisation name within it, I still think this is the most practical solution - particularly if the EndNote user is only/mainly using APA. The template I suggested earlier works for both print and electronic reports without leaving a hanging “Retrieved from” statement. (By the way, the addition of database in the retrieval statement is there because we suggest this reference type for other formats that arise in APA).

[chick]

@john_arnold wrote:

 

I’ve had a bit of a play with using the Department/Division field, but can’t see how it works if the reference doesn’t have an organisation name in the retrieval statement (which is the commonest situation).

 

Apart from somewhat munting the URL field by including the organisation name within it, I still think this is the most practical solution - particularly if the EndNote user is only/mainly using APA. The template I suggested earlier works for both print and electronic reports without leaving a hanging “Retrieved from” statement. (By the way, the addition of database in the retrieval statement is there because we suggest this reference type for other formats that arise in APA).

 

Quite agree with you about needing EndNote commands to have more versatility (e.g., If-then) for APA modifcations.  Your template works fine for print and electronic reports but for my research I needed to have a syntax in the form of  #36 of the APA Style Guide for Electronic References concerning reports from the National Center for Education Statistics.  Accordingly the retrieval line would be: 

 

Retrieved from National Center for Education Statistics: http://nces.edu.gov/pubs2006/2004783.pdf

 

You’re right that the Department/Division field alone won’t create the proper effect so I customized a blank field (URL2) to hold URLS that would be linked to the Department/Division field:  |Retrieved from*Department/Division*URL2|

 

So adding it to your syntax, the complete template which would address paper, electronic or database retrievals, and NCES reports would be (contingent upon testing):

 

Author. (|Year|.*Date|). Title| (|Type|*No.*ReportNumber|)|.*City|:*Institution.|.|*{Document Number)|*Retrieved from*Name of Database*database.|*Retrieved from*URL|*Retrieved from*Department/Division*URL2|

 

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* indicates the Link Adjacent Text command