edited books: editors or authors?

[rickl]

Hi everyone,
When entering the editors of edited books, is it common practice to put them in the authors field or in the editors field? And does it matter whether I follow common practice? Thanks,
Rick

[tom]

Hi Rick,
Maybe I'm missing the point of your question. However I strongly recommend to put the authors in the authors field and the editors in the editors field....
tom

[Jon]

Tom is right -- things will work best if you distinguish between authors and editors. The editor of an edited book is -- an editor.

Jon
Sonny Software

[tom]

The editor of an edited book is -- an editor.

...and is followed by (ed) or (eds) in the bibliography (at least in the styles that I use)

[rickl]

Thanks, everyone, for putting my mind at rest. I had always done it that way, but something that happened yesterday when creating a new bibliography format (based on Ref with abstract) had made me a little uneasy. When I added the "Edited Book" type, I found it was auto-populated with author and date, etc., which got me thinking that authors maybe had the broad meaning of "the people that you want listed as responsible for this work".

I've since worked out that the fields that were entered automatically probably were just a direct copy of those in the journal article type.

Thanks for all your rapid feedback,

Rick

[rickl]

I've just remembered another reason for my confusion. The names of the fields change automatically in the reference view depending on the type of reference. For edited book, both Authors and Editors are available. Is there any conceivable case where you might have both? If not, wouldn't it make sense for the usual Authors field to change its name to Editors? Just a thought...

Rick

[tom]

Is there any conceivable case where you might have both?
Rick

in all the cases where you cite a chapter of an edited book (and this is what I usually do)...here an example how I cite an edited book (authors, date, title, editors, ser. title:volume, publisher, city, pages):

Geissmann T, Possedko M, Huntzinger E, Fechter P, Ehresmann C, Romby P (2005) Regulatory RNAs as mediators of virulence gene expression in bacteria. In: Erdmann V, Brosius J, Barciszewski J (eds) Handbook of Experimental Pharmacology: RNA towards medicine. Springer, Heidelberg, pp in press

[Jon]

I've just remembered another reason for my confusion. The names of the fields change automatically in the reference view depending on the type of reference. For edited book, both Authors and Editors are available. Is there any conceivable case where you might have both? If not, wouldn't it make sense for the usual Authors field to change its name to Editors?

That wouldn't do any good -- the name of the field is user-defined. Bookends uses the field position for internal calculations, not the name. I agree the Authors field is useless in this instance, but harmless. You can rename it to something else if you like (Preferences) and use it, for say, Illustrator (or nothing).

Jon
Sonny Software

[tom]

As I mentioned above, I use both - authors and editors. In biology this is very common.

[Jon]

As I mentioned above, I use both - authors and editors. In biology this is very common.

Right, me too. But there are situations where you may want to cite the edited book, not a chapter in the book. In that case, the Authors field is irrelevant and only the Editor(s) are used.

Jon
Sonny Software

[rickl]

Tom, you're talking about the "Book chapter" reference type, right? Of course, I use those, too. In fact, I often enter an edited book as one reference, and several chapters of the book as other references. Which leads me to my next conjecture... might it be possible to have a joint editors/authors term list, since a lot of the same people appear in both lists? (Thanks for the useful info on field positions and the possibility of renaming fields, btw, Jon.)

[Jon]

Term Lists do not comingle. Authors is for authors, Editors is for editors.

Jon
Sonny Software

[Jon]

BTW, *nothing* prevents you from using the Authors field for the Editor of an Edited Book. Just do it! Then make a new format (based upon the one you want, say Chicago -- call it new Chicago or some other more felicitous name) and for Edited Book replace the 'e' in the Order field with 'a'. That's it. Now the Authors field will be output (instead of Editors) for Edited Books. And the Authors Term List will contain the name of the editor.

Simple.

Jon
Sonny Software

[rickl]

And the Authors Term List will contain the name of the editor.
Simple.

Nice idea! Thanks,
Rick

[tom]

In my opinion this is not a good idea. How do you cite an edited book when you do not refer to an author/chapter? You can't replace the authors' field by the editors (because they are NOT the authors); instead you have to enter a space-filling like --- or "multiple authors" into the authors field. The citation shown above would then look somelike this:

--- (2005) Erdmann V, Brosius J, Barciszewski J (eds) Handbook of Experimental Pharmacology: RNA towards medicine. Springer, Heidelberg

well, this is my opinion - maybe I'm wrong....and of corse if it's only for your term list you can do whatever you like....