Presentation - add Session Title, maybe Chair

[adam3smith]

https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/30294/additional-fields-needed-for-conference-paper/#Item_7

According to APA, papers presented as part of an organized panel or symposium should be cited as

Wiernik, B. M. (2013, April). Effects of respondent characteristics on organizational employee sustainability survey responses. In Dilchert, S. & Wiernik, B. M. (Chairs), Practical lessons in survey methods for measuring employee green behaviors. Symposium conducted at the annual conference of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Houston, Texas.

Getting this 100% right might be hard but I would suggest to

1. Add a field "Session Title" and map it to csl container-title" (that would be the "Practical lessons..." (I'm quite sure this is a good idea)
2. To get the chairs might be harder. My suggestion would be to add a creator type "Chair" in Zotero and map it to the rarely used csl "collection-editor" - that's however still on the hack-ish side. Alternatives would be a new creator type "Chair" (including csl Change) - a rather major change for such a rare cite-form, or to just map to "editor" and accept that we'll get the wrong label. (CSL type is "speech")

Edited to clarify Rintze's questions.

[rmzelle]

What is the CSL item type? Would editor work?

[adam3smith]

sorry, I actually meant editor, not container-author. CSL item type is speech. That still has the issue, though, that the label would be wrong.

[bdarcus]

Ugh.

[bdarcus]

OK, now that I got over my initial reaction, thoughts ...

A conference session is not conceptually similar to a "container," so that seems a stretch, that could have unintended negative consequences.

The conference is an "event."

Effectively a conference session is thus a subcomponent of that event, and therefore something we have no support for in CSL.

As for the role, a session chair is really a specific kind of event "organizer." But if APA requires session chair, that suggests maybe a dedicated role for that, which as you all I know, I hate to have to do (given the potential can-of-worms that opens up).

E.g. I think this would take some more thought and discussion on the CSL end.

[adam3smith]

Effectively a conference session is thus a subcomponent of that event, and therefore something we have no support for in CSL.

OK, so there are three strategies here:

1. We accept some conceptual stretching
2. We add more and more variables in CSL
3. We accept that we can't relatively standard citations in the most used citation styles

Instead of going through this every single time, I'd like some rules on how you think we should decide between these three in general. Having an individualized discussion every time it comes up is simply not sustainable.

[bdarcus]

I think in general you balance 1 and 2, and recognize on some things
broader conversations will be unavoidable if you want to maintain
compatibility of CSL styles and applications.

So I don't think there can be black-and-white rules.

But when I consider these individual cases, I always ask "can we imagine a
similar kind of case coming up in the future, and can we make room for that
now, or will this decision foreclose that?"

In this case I lean towards 2 because I can imagine some cases where
container-title might be needed for something else more obvious (conference
proceedings?), or a similar kind of sub-event title could come up (this is
harder to imagine in citations, but it wouldn't surprise me if it came up).

And of course you look at the definitions in the spec. A conference session
title bears little relation to the spec description of "container-title."
OTOH, if you look at the "event" variable, it parenthetically mentions this
is where you map a conference title. That suggests a hole in the spec.

On 3, I think you reject as "cannot fix" if fixing would require redesign
of some key piece of CSL, and/or if the requirement is so rare that it
doesn't justify the cost (financial, time, etc.) to fix. That doesn't apply
here, as organized sessions at conferences are common, and so is APA.

Finally, am not sure what's the easiest way to manage this. But I could
imagine maybe a wiki page of cases/tickets where it's unclear what to do,
and then at some periodic point in time, these get discussed together by
CSL devs?

On Mon, Jan 20, 2014 at 2:37 PM, Sebastian Karcher <notifications@github.com

wrote:

Effectively a conference session is thus a subcomponent of that event, and
therefore something we have no support for in CSL.

OK, so there are three strategies here:

1. We accept some conceptual stretching
2. We add more and more variables in CSL
3. We accept that we can't relatively standard citations in the most used
   citation styles

Instead of going through this every single time, I'd like some rules on
how you think we should decide between these three in general. Having
an individualized discussion every time it comes up is simply not
sustainable.

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com//issues/60#issuecomment-32790013
.

[bwiernik]

I brought up the issue and cite sessions like this frequently in my work in APA-style journals.

Bruce, I don't think your characterization of "Chair" as a kind of organizer is very accurate. As conceived by APA, the "Chair" of a conference presentation is an individual coordinating several papers, speakers, or panelists in a multi-author session. It is analogous to the editor of an edited book or special issue of a journal, not to the individual identifying venues for the event. I don't think adding such a field is setting an inappropriate precedent. As a (probably less palatable) alternative, could CSL be modified to allow alternate forms of terms so that, when there are somewhat niche requirements by a style (French styles' "directeur de la publication" comes to mind), they can be specified without having to add additional creator types to CSL.

I also am not sure I agree with your opposition to "containter-title" as a conceptual match for the Session Title. At conferences in psychology and management, papers are typically organized into sessions of 3-4 papers on a specific topic. The conference program is organized (and referenced) around the session titles, not the titles of the individual conference presentations. The session is the container in which the conference presentation resides. If you look at the citation form, it very closely matches the form of a chapter in an edited book (where "chair" corresponds to editor and "sessionTitle" corresponds to "bookTitle"). If "container-title" is really wrong, then perhaps mapping "sessionTitle" to "section" would be more palatable if the desire is really to avoid creating new CSL fields?

I don't think a variable like "sub-event" is really an appropriate hack. Sub-events sound more like something like Theme Tracks at conferences (several sessions [with multiple papers each] on a particular topic) or Topic series at conferences (e.g. the now-defunct Security Conference used to have "Personnel", "Hardware", and "Software" topic areas into which all of the sessions were organized). At APA-style conferences, symposia in theme track would have both a "session title" and a "sub-event". I am not aware of any styles requesting this information in references, but, just like special issue titles in journals, it is conceivable that such a requirement could appear in the future.

[bdarcus]

I doubt this is your intention, but you're sounding a little pedantic here.
I know full well what a session chair is, given that I've served as one on
multiple occasions (my primary career is as an academic).

And I'm ONLY talking about this from the CSL angle, which necessarily tends
to be more abstract, and a level that users don't see.

I have no objection at all to adding "session chair" and "session title"
variables to Zotero. It sounds like a good idea to me.

But I do wonder, to go back to your point on my characterization of the
chair, if that requires as well a "session organizer," who may or may not
be the same person?

The question I was focusing on is where to map that data on output. By the
definition of "container-title" in the spec, and the original intention of
the design, it does not fit here.

The notion of "containers" and "collections" refers to documents broadly
defined.

A conference is, like a music performance, or a congressional hearing, an
event: something that take place in a location, at some particular time.

This is why I was suggesting we think of a session as a sub event (the
conference is effectively the containing event).

My point here is not to say I have an easy answer; it's to say there isn't
one, and this needs some more thought and discussion.

It may be you all want to redefine those core concepts in CSL. But I'm just
urging extreme caution before doing so.

[bwiernik]

My apologies. It was not my intention to be pedantic. I was simply trying to explain exactly what the term "chair" meant in this context. The major European conference in my field uses "chair" to refer specifically to individuals involved in organizing special programs or the conference as whole (they use "session leader" for the other definition), so I wanted to be sure that we were using a common understanding. I know that most of the Zotero/CSL developers are academics; that's the big reason why the projects are so useful.

As to the "organizer" question, I was more concerned about the worry of a slippery slope for adding creator roles for "organizers" more broadly. Occasionally, I am aware of sessions that have been heavily organized by one individual with someone else serving as the "chair". For example, at SIOP (APA Division 14) conference two years ago, a debate occurred between two authors on opposite sides of an issue. The debate was organized by one researcher, who arranged for a different person to moderate the discussion. In the program, this session was listed with the moderator as "chair", as that is standard for debates of this type, even though the session was organized and submitted by someone else. In citations to this debate, the organizer is not listed per APA 6th edition style, but it seems conceivable that such a requirement could be introduced in the future.

The other place where I can see organizer and chair as separate are in things like special programs and theme tracks at conferences. For example, a paper at the SIOP 2011 conference was:

Mirvis, P. (2011, April). Turning business leaders into global citizens, in Dubois, C. (Chair), Leading and engaging employees in sustainable organizations. Symposium conducted in Managing HR for Environmental Sustainability (Chairs: D. S. Ones & S. Dilchert), theme track at the annual conference of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Chicago, IL, US.

Per APA 6th edition, the theme track information is not referenced, but APA also does not reference things like Special Issue titles or editors. In this reference, the chair of the session (Dubois) is a different person and very distinct role (essentially editor) from the chairs of the theme track program (Ones and Dilchert), who are really "organizers" in the purest sense of that word.

If there is value in keeping "documents" and "events" with completely distinct fields, then it is perfectly to do so. In that case, the ability to delimit presentations within events in parallel ways to published papers are needed (Sessions and Sections/Programs/Tracks for presentations within events just like Issues, Volumes, and Sections within a Book/Journal).

As a somewhat related idea, some conferences with titles are similar in nature to books within a series. The conferences have a title and theme and are only connected to other conferences in the series in their format, similar to how books in a book series may be only loosely connected to other books in the series. As examples:
"Exploring organisational fit and misfit, the 4th Global e-Conference on Fit, Oxford, United Kingdom"
"Succession strategies: Building your leadership bench, the 10th annual Leading Edge Consortium, Chicago, IL"
At present, both of these are entered with the conference title and name/series in the "Meeting name" field. I don't have an opinion on whether the conference title and general meeting name should be separate, but it's a thought.

[bdarcus]

I'll take a look at details when I get a chance (it's a long message ;-)),
but general note: the challenge with this stuff always is how we
simultaneously design for the specific case and the general, so that
decisions on one don't cause problems later elsewhere. Sometimes that's
hard.

I would just note for example that hearings are another specific case that
shares some commonality with this case.

[bdarcus]

Actually, to pull out one suggestion, something like the below is indeed a
possibility:

If there is value in keeping "documents" and "events" with completely
distinct fields, then it is perfectly to do so. In that case, the ability
to delimit presentations within events in parallel ways to published papers
are needed (Sessions and Sections/Programs/Tracks for presentations within
events just like Issues, Volumes, and Sections within a Book/Journal).

[bwiernik]

@bdarcus Do you think chair could make it into 1.0.2?

The current version of apa.csl uses container-title with speech for citations to presentations in a symposium. That seems to work well. It seems reasonable to me to think of a session containing papers as a “container”, and something like a lecture series or a theme track at a conference as a “collection”.

If we don’t want to use container-title for this purpose (and I can see the argument against it), how about event-container-title and event-collection-title as parallels to container-title and collection-title for event information?

In considered shorter labels like session-title and track-title, but I think using the same container/collection vocabulary and explicitly including “event” is clearer.

[bdarcus]

We should resolve this now. But to pull back, some propositions:

1. an academic conference is an event; so is a hearing, a speech, a performance
2. events can have sub-events; in a conference, a session would be an example
3. what we're talking about here is roles within the above; with "chair" being a subtype of "organizer"
4. when citing, one often, but not always, cites a document about the event in question; a recording of a performance, a transcript of a hearing, a conference proceeding

Is that all correct?

So how can we best deal with all this in a unified way, while accommodating the specific case?

One step might be to add "organizer" and "chair"?

Titles?

[bdarcus]

For conferences, we need a way to distinguish three titles, and potentially associate contributors with each of these levels:

1. paper
2. session
3. conference

Right?

So:

1. paper (title)
2. session (containing-title)
3. conference (here's where I get stuck)

Maybe we can just change the documentation to make clear that one can use container-title for 2?

[bwiernik]

tl;dr: I suggest we add chair and organizer creator variables, update documentation for container-title and collection-title

A few points:

1. Academic conferences and speeches are conceptually similar events with similar citation needs. Performances and hearings often have different citation needs, so those probably need distinct types. Those are discussed in other issues, so let's set them aside for now.
2. Citing conferences/speeches have two requirements that aren't currently met by CSL:
   1. Unique creator roles
   2. Sub-event structure
3. Whether what is cited is a document/recording or not is not that relevant I don't think. For the specific case of conference presentations, these are generally not to a document, but to the event itself, which may or may not be recorded or retrievable. A document might be available online, but the citation form still follows the event structure unless it's formally published in a proceedings.

Creator roles

1. chair and organizer would be good. I think we could maybe get by with just organizer and have a chair term, but I don't see a problem with having both types of creators.
2. Other potential conference-related creator roles are "moderator" and "discussant".
   1. I don't think these roles are cited often enough for them to be necessary in CSL (vs. just as variables in a client mapped to author)

Event level titles

I can see four levels of information

1. paper (title)
2. session (?containing-title?)
3. series/collection (?collecting-title?)
   1. A collection of multiple sessions
   2. Think things like "Meredith Crawford Lecture Series" or "Theme Track on Privacy and Technology"
   3. Analogous to a special issue of a journal or a book series
4. conference (the existing event variable)

The question is whether we need new variables for (2) and (3) above or if we can just update documentation for container-title and collection-title to encompass the above. I think we should just update documentation.

For the question of what level is organizer or chair associated with, that's basically the same problem as editor or translator for a chapter. I'm not sure there is a way for this to be unambiguous with the current flat data model. Relying on heuristics (e.g., chair is the chair of session [container-title], organizer is organizer of conference [event]) should work in the large majority of cases.

[denismaier]

For the question of what level is organizer or chair associated with, that's basically the same problem as editor or translator for a chapter. I'm not sure there is a way for this to be unambiguous with the current flat data model. Relying on heuristics (e.g., chair is the chair of session [container-title], organizer is organizer of conference [event]) should work in the large majority of cases.

So, as a sidenote, you also see the need for a revised datamodel? (as outlined https://github.com/citation-style-language/csl-evolution/issues/12.)

[bwiernik]

So, summary for Zotero:

1. Add Chair (chair) and Organizer (organizer) creators to Presentation.
2. Add Session Title (container-title) and Series (collection-title) fields to Presentation.

[dstillman]

So sessionTitle will be base-mapped to "Publication", similar to proceedingsTitle in conferencePaper.

[bwiernik]

Yes, exactly.

Also note I had a typo above. Organizer should be mapped to organizer.