Two consecutive citations not collapsing in quarto - Positron

[antonsampedro]

Hi, and thanks for citeproc.

With a CSL style using et-al-min="3" and et-al-use-first="1" plus collapse="year", two adjacent citations whose rendered author text is identical (“Hennelly et al.”) are not collapsed, because the full author lists differ after the first author.

Expected (what citeproc-js in the Zotero Word plugin produces):

(Hennelly et al., 2023, 2025)

Actual (pandoc/Quarto):

(Hennelly et al., 2023; Hennelly et al., 2025)

Minimal example

test.qmd:

markdown

format: docx
bibliography: refs.bib
csl: style.csl

Test [@hennelly2023; @hennelly2025].

refs.bib (shortened; both entries share the first author but not the second):

bibtex
@Article{hennelly2023,
author = {Hennelly, Lauren M. and Sarwar, Ghulam and Fatima, Hira},
title = {Genomic analysis of wolves from Pakistan},
journal = {Journal of Heredity},
year = {2023}
}
@Article{hennelly2025,
author = {Hennelly, Lauren M. and Parreira, B{'a}rbara R. and Noble, Ash},
title = {Continent-wide view of genomic diversity in the wolves of Asia},
journal = {Communications Biology},
year = {2025}
}

style.csl: Elsevier Harvard (http://www.zotero.org/styles/elsevier-harvard), with the block:

xml





...

Question: is this intended? Should collapse="year" compare the rendered (et-al-truncated) names rather than the underlying name lists? I’m aware this has been discussed on the CSL forum regarding citeproc-hs vs citeproc-js. If the current behaviour is intentional, a note in the docs would help.

How should I proceed?

Versions: Quarto 1.10.18, pandoc 3.10 ((bundled with Quarto), macOS (Apple Silicon)).

[jgm]

Hm. CSL spec says: "With cite grouping, cites in in-text citations with identical rendered names are grouped together."
So perhaps that means that these should be grouped, since the "rendered names" are the same?
@bdarcus may be able to clarify.

[antonsampedro]

Thanks @jgm , indeed. But the reality is that it renders (Hennelly et al., 2023; Hennelly et al., 2025). I am not sure what I am doing wrong or if I should modify the script somehow. Let's see if anyone know what to do.

[jgm]

I think pandoc is probably doing it wrong, but it would be nice to get this confirmed.

[jgm]

Actual (pandoc/Quarto): (Hennelly et al., 2023; Hennelly et al., 2025)

Current pandoc HEAD gives:

Test (Hennelly et al., 2025, 2023).

Note that the verison of elsevier-harvard.csl has descending sorting, so this seems correct.

Upshot: I don't think anything needs fixing. What version of pandoc are you using?

[antonsampedro]

pandoc version using in quarto rendering is 3.10. I also tried to render externally in console (pandoc 3.12.1) and the results were the same

$ quarto pandoc --version
pandoc 3.10
Features: +server +lua
Scripting engine: Lua 5.4

$ pandoc --version
pandoc 3.12.1
Features: +server +lua
Scripting engine: Lua 5.4

[antonsampedro]

Might it come from the difference between Zotero Word behavior using citeprc-js, and the citeproc from pandoc (in Haskell) used in Positron?

[jgm]

I don't understand why we're getting different results.
This is what I'm seeing:

% cat bib.bib
@Article{hennelly2023,
author = {Hennelly, Lauren M. and Sarwar, Ghulam and Fatima, Hira},
title = {Genomic analysis of wolves from Pakistan},
journal = {Journal of Heredity},
year = {2023}
}
@Article{hennelly2025,
author = {Hennelly, Lauren M. and Parreira, B{'a}rbara R. and Noble, Ash},
title = {Continent-wide view of genomic diversity in the wolves of Asia},
journal = {Communications Biology},
year = {2025}
}

 % pandoc --biblio bib.bib --csl elsevier-harvard.csl --citeproc -t plain
Test [@hennelly2023; @hennelly2025].
^D

Test (Hennelly et al., 2025, 2023).

Hennelly, L.M., Parreira, B.R., Noble, A., 2025. Continent-wide view of
genomic diversity in the wolves of asia. Communications Biology.

Hennelly, L.M., Sarwar, G., Fatima, H., 2023. Genomic analysis of wolves
from pakistan. Journal of Heredity.

This is with latest elsevier-harvard.csl from the style repository. Are you seeing something different if you do exactly this?

[antonsampedro]

In console I get the same result as you. But for some reason, in Positron, pandoc is being executed differently and quarto does not respect the style. That is why it read differently
pandoc --version (3.12.1)
quarto pandoc --version (3.10).

Hence my question, if pandoc is working differently in Positron (Quarto)

[antonsampedro]

I found the issue!!!

zotero had imported the bib file with a mistake in @hennelly2023.

It had imported:

@Article{hennelly2023,
author = {Hennelly, Lauren M(no comma) and Sarwar, Ghulam and Fatima, Hira},
title = {Genomic analysis of wolves from Pakistan},
journal = {Journal of Heredity},
year = {2023}
}

therefore it assumed a different author. I have imported a huge .bib file for my thesis, I dont understand How it could happen in an untomatic process but regading pandoc everything is fine.

Thank you very much for your help. Very much appreciated