Feature Request: Editable Citations

When Logos provides a citation (either through copy/paste or in the book info), it is sometimes not quite right. I want the ability to edit the citation information for resources within Logos.

For example, when citing the Lexham Bible Dictionary, all the editors are included; I want: John Barry et al. Sometimes, journal articles do not include page numbers, or there are other oddities. I can correct these once I paste the citation into Word, but it would be ideal if I could "fix" things at the source.

If this already exists, please tell me!

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Comments

Morgan

It may be helpful to go into the program settings and see the different citation styles.

Sam Shelton

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1295421#Comment_1295421

You can find information about changing citation styles here:

How do I cite Logos? – Logos Help Center

Christian Alexander

That is correct Phillip I have noticed this before as well. I have tried changing citation styles too. That did not work for me. Sometimes it is just little oddities that are in there. These make the citation incorrect and when writing it is tiresome to change it every time.

Doug Mangum (Lexham)

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1295430#Comment_1295430

There is no way to edit that information within Logos. The team that manages that data here has a maximalist approach to bibliographic info, regardless of whether any academic citation styles actually require or encourage including the data. The LBD list of editors is a good example of the TMI that results. Technically, if a reference work has an editor-in-chief or general editor, they are the only one to name in the citation. So when I cite LBD, I only mentioned John Barry as editor, no "et al." and no long list of everyone on the title page. But I always have to edit the citations exported from Logos to conform to style, even when selecting the appropriate style from the dropdown list. I believe this is a known concern that is on some long list of things to address someday, but in the meantime, you'll have to edit the entries in your word processing software.

Keith Pang

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1295492#Comment_1295492

I always felt that the citation feature needed to be improved. You should always make sure you check that the provided citation matches whatever format you want. Logos is not perfect in this area.

Justin Gatlin

I know it is another program, but I use Zotero. If you set your citation style to Refer, you can import the book from your clipboard. Zotero will automatically plug in et al. and if you use a style that includes Ibid., will automatically incorporate that too.

MJ. Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1295492#Comment_1295492

There is no way to edit that information within Logos.

Note you help everyone in the Logos community if you report errors in the data. Logos is good at repairing such errors quite quickly.

Doug Mangum (Lexham)

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1295506#Comment_1295506

Note you help everyone in the Logos community if you report errors in the data. Logos is good at repairing such errors quite quickly.

I'm part of Logos, and I have brought it up internally. In this case, it's not considered an error because it was intentional to record as much information as possible about each resource in the bibliography metadata. The software works as intended. Unfortunately, that decision about data collection limits the feature's usefulness because if you have to conform correctly to a specific citation style, then manual editing of the output is necessary. Our options are to either revisit our data to clean it up so that it only includes the necessary information for each style or develop a way to fine tune the tool to ignore the extra info collected. I suppose I could suggest they make bibliography documents editable. Right now it creates a fixed entry with the information exported from the tool, but it's fixed because the citation style can be changed. So I have made attempts to have the issue addressed, but it's a bigger task than correcting a few data errors.

MJ. Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1295507#Comment_1295507

So I have made attempts to have the issue addressed, but it's a bigger task than correcting a few data errors.

Quite true. But most of the problems I run into because I am not writing academic papers are simple typos or missing article titles. I wanted to make sure people didn't just shrug their shoulders and not report the obvious errors.

Phillip J. Long

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1295492#Comment_1295492

There is no way to edit that information within Logos.

Thanks, Doug. I am doing just as you say, editing the pasted entry each time. Maximalist is best since it is easier to delete editors than to add them every time. Sometimes the difference between SBL 1 and SBL 2 is striking. For the LBD, SBL 1 has all the editors, SBL 2 has no editor.

I was 99% sure it was impossible, which is why I stated this as a feature request.

Phillip J. Long

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1295509#Comment_1295509

But most of the problems I run into because I am not writing academic papers are simple typos or missing article titles.

When this happens, I find that the same errors appear in the academic databases. The source of these problems is how the data was first formatted and submitted to ProQuest, etc. So articles in all caps or weird formatting typos aren't (always) Logos's fault.