Book and Journal References

eXtyles will fully tag references that it identifies as books (<bok>, <edb>) and journals (<jrn>). When your references appear as in the examples to the right, without any added eXtyles warnings (in the form of Word comments), you can safely assume that eXtyles has correctly identified the various elements of the reference and restructured them according to USGS editorial style.

Further, the color of the character styles that eXtyles applies to these references enables the editor to quickly proof the reference entry. In these examples, it is easy to see that the reference elements have been correctly identified and the references have been accurately edited.

Conference Proceedings

eXtyles will also attempt to fully color code those references it identifies as conference proceedings (<conf>). However, because of the variety of formats that conference proceedings can take, eXtyles will not restructure these references. Your editors will still need to edit <conf> references to conform to USGS editorial style, and care will need to be taken to ensure that any color coding that has been applied is correctly retained during manual editing.

Electronic References, Legal Documents, and Theses/Dissertations

Because of the variety of formats in which references to certain types of documents can take, eXtyles will not fully color code or restructure references that it identifies as electronic (<eref>), legal (<lgl>), and thesis (<ths>).

Note that eXtyles will still try to identify and color code certain elements of these types of references. For every reference, eXtyles will attempt to color code: (1) author given name, (2) author surname, and (3) publication date. Additionally, for some references (e.g., conferences and theses and dissertations), eXtyles will also attempt to color code the document title and URL or DOI. It is critical that for every reference the author name(s) and date are color coded, which enables eXtyles to perform accurate citation matching; however, if eXtyles has failed to color code other parts of the reference (e.g., the title), it is not essential that you manually apply color coding to those elements.

Also, because eXtyles will not restructure these types of references, your editors will still need to manually copyedit references that are tagged as <eref>, <lgl>, and <ths>.

Other and Unknown References

Other

Most types of references not covered by the previously described tags will fall into the <other> category, including working papers, patents, maps, and other documents. The example shows a reference to a map (atlas) that has been correctly tagged as <other>.

Unknown

eXtyles will provide a message after Bibliographic Reference Processing has completed that will include the number of <unknown> references eXtyles identified:

It is important to note whether there are <unknown> references in the document, because they will need to be carefully reviewed to see whether the reference is, in fact, something known (like a journal) and was not correctly identified because of an error in the source content. 

Reference Processing and USGS Publications

eXtyles Reference Processing will tag, color code, and restructure USGS active publications, such as Professional Papers, Techniques and Methods, Circulars, and so on. These publications should be tagged as <bok>, as in the examples.

However, there are some formatting conventions that will cause eXtyles to unsuccessfully identify and process a reference to a USGS publication. Following are the most common causes of eXtyles processing issues.

Format of Author Given Names

The mixture of initials and spelled-out given names in a single reference falls outside of eXtyles’s automation capabilities. When such a mix of styles is used, eXtyles is unable to disambiguate the components of the authors’ names, and will fail to fully color code and restructure the reference. For example, this reference:

McGuire, V.L., Johnson, Michael, Schieffer, R.L., Stanton, J.S., Sebree, S.K., and Verstraeten, I.M., 2003, Water in storage and approaches to ground-water management, High Plains aquifer, 2000: U.S. Geological Survey Circular 1243, 51 p.

will result in the following after Bibliographic Reference Processing:

You can see that eXtyles was unable to proceed with color coding and restructuring after the first author’s name. This is because the second author’s given name (Johnson, Michael) is spelled out, and eXtyles is consequently unable to safely disambiguate the given names from the surnames in the rest of the author list. Rather than incorrectly restructure the reference, eXtyles stops color coding, and adds a helpful warning in the form of a Word comment.

There are a couple of ways to resolve this: (1) prior to running Reference Processing the author given names can be edited to conform to a consistent style (either initials or spelled out), or (2) the reference can be edited after Reference Processing, and then reference processing can be re-run.

To perform the second option, you will need to manually change the author’s spelled-out given name to M. and remove the eXtyles tags (<bok>):

After re-running Reference Processing the result is a correctly tagged and color-coded reference:

<other> or <bok>: What's the Difference?

Both <other> and <bok> references will make their way through eXtyles processing without problems (e.g., Citation Matching, XML Export). However, whether the reference is left as <other> or manipulated so that eXtyles tags it as <bok> has a few key implications, both editorially and in the XML.

Editorial Implications

Crossref Linking and Correction

Crossref Linking and Correction does not check references tagged as <other>; it only checks references tagged as <jrn>, <bok>, or <edb>. Therefore, if you would like the reference to be validated against Crossref and possibly have the DOI inserted (if a match is found), the reference will have to be tagged as <bok>, and it will need to have been successfully color coded by Bibliographic Reference Processing. See the examples to the right; the <bok> example could then be edited to remove the sheet and scale information from the brackets, in compliance with USGS editorial style.

Automatic Reference Restructuring

eXtyles will not attempt to restructure references tagged as <other>; however, eXtyles will attempt to restructure references tagged as <bok>. For example, in the reference example to the right, periods incorrectly enclose the publication date, and there is a period after the document title rather than a colon. The incorrect punctuation is retained in the reference tagged as <other>, while the punctuation in the reference tagged as <bok> is correctly edited.