Sonny Software

Is it possible to format "John C, Doe J, Tom M, Larry V; Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetuer; Nature; 2001; p200-204" to this: "John C, Larry V et al.; Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetuer; Nature; 2001; p200-204"?

i.e; first author, last author et al.?

Hi,

No, that's not possible. What journal uses such a format?

Jon
Sonny Software

Jon wrote:Hi,
No, that's not possible. What journal uses such a format?
Jon
Sonny Software

. None. But several of us here are contributing to the development of a new soon-coming biomedical journal and would like to have the format of "first & last author". Given the high configurable options in BE, this seems like an easy fix.. Is it really impossible?

No, it's not impossible. But Bookends doesn't support an infinite number of options (imagine the UI!). I don't believe "first..last, et al." is an acceptable (i.e. used) combination. There's no point in cluttering up the UI with such constructions in that case.

Jon
Sonny Software

Jon wrote:No, it's not impossible. But Bookends doesn't support an infinite number of options (imagine the UI!). I don't believe "first..last, et al." is an acceptable (i.e. used) combination. There's no point in cluttering up the UI with such constructions in that case.

Jon
Sonny Software

I hear you. Perhaps if this format becomes well-accepted, then maybe .... ?!
The reason we think it's best is because a) the first and last author are usually the most important contributors to an article and will be most remembered when cited, and b) if a reader wanted to quickly do a reference search, they are likely to hit better scientifically-relevant combinations with the first and last author (than say for the first and second author searches..).
If you do end up adding it, do give me a heads up, even if as a beta..
Thx for the promptness, as always..

Hi,

I agree with you that first..last author has advantages. One of the first non-obvious features added to Bookends was the ability to display authors in the List View in this way. If it were to gain currency among publishers, of course we'd support it.

Jon
Sonny Software