BibTeX inproceedings entries not rendered correctly in APA style

BibTeX inproceedings entries not rendered correctly in APA style

[Nicola]

I don't know if this is restricted to inproceedings entries, but
consider the following test.bib:

    @inproceedings{Foo:1983,
      author = {Foo, Bar},
      booktitle = {Booktitle},
      pages = {34--39},
      title = {Title of the paper},
      year = {1983}
    }

When this is typeset:

    \usebtxdataset[test.bib]
    \usebtxdefinitions[apa]
    \starttext
      \cite[Foo:1983]
      \placelistofpublications
    \stoptext

the result is:

(Foo, 1983)
Foo, B. (1983). Title of the paper. In Title of the paper., Booktitle. Author.

I would expect:

(Foo, 1983)
Foo, B. (1983). Title of the paper. In Booktitle, p. 34–39.

or something similar.

I can reproduce it with ConTeXt from TeX Live 2021 and the current LMTX.
Is it a bug?

Nicola


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Re: BibTeX inproceedings entries not rendered correctly in APA style

[Rik Kabel]

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On 5/24/2021 16:28, Nicola wrote:
>     I don't know if this is restricted to inproceedings entries, but
> consider the following test.bib:
>
>      @inproceedings{Foo:1983,
>        author = {Foo, Bar},
>        booktitle = {Booktitle},
>        pages = {34--39},
>        title = {Title of the paper},
>        year = {1983}
>      }
>
> When this is typeset:
>
>      \usebtxdataset[test.bib]
>      \usebtxdefinitions[apa]
>      \starttext
>        \cite[Foo:1983]
>        \placelistofpublications
>      \stoptext
>
> the result is:
>
> (Foo, 1983)
> Foo, B. (1983). Title of the paper. In Title of the paper., Booktitle. Author.
>
> I would expect:
>
> (Foo, 1983)
> Foo, B. (1983). Title of the paper. In Booktitle, p. 34–39.
>
> or something similar.
>
> I can reproduce it with ConTeXt from TeX Live 2021 and the current LMTX.
> Is it a bug?
>
> Nicola

This is intended. Or rather, it is a side-effect of the intended behavior.

If you add an editor ("editor={Baz, Bar}") you will get something like:

    Foo, B. (1983). Title of the paper. In B. Baz (Ed.), /Booktitle/.
    Author.

And if you then add a publisher ("publisher={Paymefirst}") you will get:

    Foo, B. (1983). Title of the paper. In B. Bar (Ed.), Booktitle.
    Paymefirst.

The APA presumes that you have both an editor and a publisher for pieces 
contained in other works. It calls for the use of the author as 
publisher if no publisher is present. It is silent about what to do if 
you have no editor.

The editor and publisher fields are described as required in 
mkiv-publications.pdf (page 85), however, you should be able to define 
your own customized btx handling (see chapter 6) to override this, 
removing both the editor and the publisher as requirements. Just a 
little coding.

(I have previously suggested that repeating the title in the case of a 
missing editor should not be done. The behavior has not been changed in 
last the two years.)

You should take careful note of the following from page 29 of that manual:

    /A note on the APA style: /We get the strong impression that the APA
    bibliography style standard was made with the implicit assumption
    that manual intervention would be involved in the editing and
    production process; It has been an arduous task to create a system
    capable of fully conforming to these specifications.

I will add that there is still quite a bit of work to do for APA and 
pretty much any other published style. Manual tuning (or editorial 
leniency) is required to conform in all but the most basic cases.


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Re: BibTeX inproceedings entries not rendered correctly in APA style

[Alan Braslau]

On Mon, 24 May 2021 17:53:49 -0400
Rik Kabel <ConTeXt@rik.users.panix.com> wrote:

> This is intended. Or rather, it is a side-effect of the intended
> behavior.
> 
> If you add an editor ("editor={Baz, Bar}") you will get something
> like:
> 
>     Foo, B. (1983). Title of the paper. In B. Baz (Ed.), /Booktitle/.
>     Author.
> 
> And if you then add a publisher ("publisher={Paymefirst}") you will
> get:
> 
>     Foo, B. (1983). Title of the paper. In B. Bar (Ed.), Booktitle.
>     Paymefirst.
> 
> The APA presumes that you have both an editor and a publisher for
> pieces contained in other works. It calls for the use of the author
> as publisher if no publisher is present. It is silent about what to
> do if you have no editor.

It looks like a missing editor field should be caught. What should the
rule be?

Actually, @inproceedings should not be used without an editor - makes
no sense. If the author of the paper happens to be the editor, then the
.bib data file should define this with an editor= field.

We can change the behavior if a clear case can be made as to what
fallback would make sense. Keep in mind the dictum: "garbage in/garbage
out"...

Alan
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Re: BibTeX inproceedings entries not rendered correctly in APA style

[Rik Kabel]

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On 5/24/2021 22:12, Alan Braslau wrote:
> On Mon, 24 May 2021 17:53:49 -0400
> Rik Kabel <ConTeXt@rik.users.panix.com> wrote:
>
>> This is intended. Or rather, it is a side-effect of the intended
>> behavior.
>>
>> If you add an editor ("editor={Baz, Bar}") you will get something
>> like:
>>
>>      Foo, B. (1983). Title of the paper. In B. Baz (Ed.), /Booktitle/.
>>      Author.
>>
>> And if you then add a publisher ("publisher={Paymefirst}") you will
>> get:
>>
>>      Foo, B. (1983). Title of the paper. In B. Bar (Ed.), Booktitle.
>>      Paymefirst.
>>
>> The APA presumes that you have both an editor and a publisher for
>> pieces contained in other works. It calls for the use of the author
>> as publisher if no publisher is present. It is silent about what to
>> do if you have no editor.
> It looks like a missing editor field should be caught. What should the
> rule be?
>
> Actually, @inproceedings should not be used without an editor - makes
> no sense. If the author of the paper happens to be the editor, then the
> .bib data file should define this with an editor= field.
>
> We can change the behavior if a clear case can be made as to what
> fallback would make sense. Keep in mind the dictum: "garbage in/garbage
> out"...
>
> Alan

For the case of works within works (inproceedings, inbook, incollection, 
perhaps conference) I would think that the simplest solution is to 
simply drop it, so that in the example above one would simply get:

    Foo, B. (1983). Title of the paper. In /Booktitle/. Paymefirst.

Although I do think that, at least for inproceedings, lack of an editor 
should at least be flagged. A simple compilation of works may have no 
named editor, of I see no reason to require it for inbook or 
incollection. Cheap publishers regularly put out such collections of 
out-of-copyright works.

The implicit assumption that a work with no documented publisher is a 
self-published work is not especially to my liking -- publishers may 
have good reason to not identify themselves (think of the publishers of 
the works of Spinoza and, in part, Voltaire) -- but I understand that 
the APA thinks it important. Of course, if you cannot document the 
publisher for an entry, you can explicitly list it as unknown or /sine 
nomine/, as appropriate, to avoid the infelicity of having the author's 
name just stuck in there.

-- 
Rik


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Re: BibTeX inproceedings entries not rendered correctly in APA style

[Alan Braslau]

On Mon, 24 May 2021 23:10:34 -0400
Rik Kabel <ConTeXt@rik.users.panix.com> wrote:

> 
> On 5/24/2021 22:12, Alan Braslau wrote:
> > On Mon, 24 May 2021 17:53:49 -0400
> > Rik Kabel <ConTeXt@rik.users.panix.com> wrote:
> >
> >> This is intended. Or rather, it is a side-effect of the intended
> >> behavior.
> >>
> >> If you add an editor ("editor={Baz, Bar}") you will get something
> >> like:
> >>
> >>      Foo, B. (1983). Title of the paper. In B. Baz (Ed.),
> >> /Booktitle/. Author.
> >>
> >> And if you then add a publisher ("publisher={Paymefirst}") you will
> >> get:
> >>
> >>      Foo, B. (1983). Title of the paper. In B. Bar (Ed.),
> >> Booktitle. Paymefirst.
> >>
> >> The APA presumes that you have both an editor and a publisher for
> >> pieces contained in other works. It calls for the use of the author
> >> as publisher if no publisher is present. It is silent about what to
> >> do if you have no editor.
> > It looks like a missing editor field should be caught. What should
> > the rule be?
> >
> > Actually, @inproceedings should not be used without an editor -
> > makes no sense. If the author of the paper happens to be the
> > editor, then the .bib data file should define this with an editor=
> > field.
> >
> > We can change the behavior if a clear case can be made as to what
> > fallback would make sense. Keep in mind the dictum: "garbage
> > in/garbage out"...
> >
> > Alan
> 
> For the case of works within works (inproceedings, inbook,
> incollection, perhaps conference) I would think that the simplest
> solution is to simply drop it, so that in the example above one would
> simply get:
> 
>     Foo, B. (1983). Title of the paper. In /Booktitle/. Paymefirst.
> 
> Although I do think that, at least for inproceedings, lack of an
> editor should at least be flagged. A simple compilation of works may
> have no named editor, of I see no reason to require it for inbook or 
> incollection. Cheap publishers regularly put out such collections of 
> out-of-copyright works.
> 
> The implicit assumption that a work with no documented publisher is a 
> self-published work is not especially to my liking -- publishers may 
> have good reason to not identify themselves (think of the publishers
> of the works of Spinoza and, in part, Voltaire) -- but I understand
> that the APA thinks it important. Of course, if you cannot document
> the publisher for an entry, you can explicitly list it as unknown or
> /sine nomine/, as appropriate, to avoid the infelicity of having the
> author's name just stuck in there.

I sent a simple fix to Hans that handles the missing editor, silently.
Someone who would want "Anonymous" or "unknown", or anything else can
always put editor="Anonymous", etc. in their .bib database.

Alan

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Re: BibTeX inproceedings entries not rendered correctly in APA style

[Nicola]

On 2021-05-25, Alan Braslau <braslau.list@comcast.net> wrote:
> On Mon, 24 May 2021 23:10:34 -0400
> Rik Kabel <ConTeXt@rik.users.panix.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> On 5/24/2021 22:12, Alan Braslau wrote:
>> > On Mon, 24 May 2021 17:53:49 -0400
>> > Rik Kabel <ConTeXt@rik.users.panix.com> wrote:
>> >
>> >> This is intended. Or rather, it is a side-effect of the intended
>> >> behavior.
>> >>
>> >> If you add an editor ("editor={Baz, Bar}") you will get something
>> >> like:
>> >>
>> >>      Foo, B. (1983). Title of the paper. In B. Baz (Ed.),
>> >> /Booktitle/. Author.
>> >>
>> >> And if you then add a publisher ("publisher={Paymefirst}") you will
>> >> get:
>> >>
>> >>      Foo, B. (1983). Title of the paper. In B. Bar (Ed.),
>> >> Booktitle. Paymefirst.
>> >>
>> >> The APA presumes that you have both an editor and a publisher for
>> >> pieces contained in other works. It calls for the use of the author
>> >> as publisher if no publisher is present. It is silent about what to
>> >> do if you have no editor.
>> > It looks like a missing editor field should be caught. What should
>> > the rule be?
>> >
>> > Actually, @inproceedings should not be used without an editor -
>> > makes no sense. If the author of the paper happens to be the
>> > editor, then the .bib data file should define this with an editor=
>> > field.
>> >
>> > We can change the behavior if a clear case can be made as to what
>> > fallback would make sense. Keep in mind the dictum: "garbage
>> > in/garbage out"...
>> >
>> > Alan
>>
>> For the case of works within works (inproceedings, inbook,
>> incollection, perhaps conference) I would think that the simplest
>> solution is to simply drop it, so that in the example above one would
>> simply get:
>>
>>     Foo, B. (1983). Title of the paper. In /Booktitle/. Paymefirst.
>>
>> Although I do think that, at least for inproceedings, lack of an
>> editor should at least be flagged. A simple compilation of works may
>> have no named editor, of I see no reason to require it for inbook or
>> incollection. Cheap publishers regularly put out such collections of
>> out-of-copyright works.
>>
>> The implicit assumption that a work with no documented publisher is a
>> self-published work is not especially to my liking -- publishers may
>> have good reason to not identify themselves (think of the publishers
>> of the works of Spinoza and, in part, Voltaire) -- but I understand
>> that the APA thinks it important. Of course, if you cannot document
>> the publisher for an entry, you can explicitly list it as unknown or
>> /sine nomine/, as appropriate, to avoid the infelicity of having the
>> author's name just stuck in there.
>
> I sent a simple fix to Hans that handles the missing editor, silently.
> Someone who would want "Anonymous" or "unknown", or anything else can
> always put editor="Anonymous", etc. in their .bib database.

Thank you all for the precious comments.

The current LMTX appears to have almost fixed my issue, except that
inproceedings entries without a publisher have the text "Author"
instead of the publisher's name.

I must say that I have no requirement to use the APA style specifically;
I do it only because it uses the format (Name, Year) for the citation.
I guess that I could use another style (aps seems fine) and just
customize the citation format. I have tried with

    \usebtxdataset[main.bib]
    \setupbtx[default:cite][alternative=authoryear]
    \usebtxdefinitions[aps]

but it seems that the setup command has no effect: the citations still
use numbers.

Nicola


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Re: BibTeX inproceedings entries not rendered correctly in APA style

[Alan Braslau]

On Thu, 27 May 2021 20:21:55 -0000 (UTC)
Nicola <nvitacolonna@gmail.com> wrote:

> Thank you all for the precious comments.
> 
> The current LMTX appears to have almost fixed my issue, except that
> inproceedings entries without a publisher have the text "Author"
> instead of the publisher's name.
> 
> I must say that I have no requirement to use the APA style
> specifically; I do it only because it uses the format (Name, Year)
> for the citation. I guess that I could use another style (aps seems
> fine) and just customize the citation format. I have tried with
> 
>     \usebtxdataset[main.bib]
>     \setupbtx[default:cite][alternative=authoryear]
>     \usebtxdefinitions[aps]
> 
> but it seems that the setup command has no effect: the citations still
> use numbers.

APS is an inherently numbered citation format.

If you have not defined a publisher, how should ANY format place the
undefined publisher's name?

I'm not sure what you want.

Alan
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Re: BibTeX inproceedings entries not rendered correctly in APA style

[Aditya Mahajan]

On Fri, 28 May 2021, Alan Braslau wrote:

> On Thu, 27 May 2021 20:21:55 -0000 (UTC)
> Nicola <nvitacolonna@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > Thank you all for the precious comments.
> > 
> > The current LMTX appears to have almost fixed my issue, except that
> > inproceedings entries without a publisher have the text "Author"
> > instead of the publisher's name.
> > 
> > I must say that I have no requirement to use the APA style
> > specifically; I do it only because it uses the format (Name, Year)
> > for the citation. I guess that I could use another style (aps seems
> > fine) and just customize the citation format. I have tried with
> > 
> >     \usebtxdataset[main.bib]
> >     \setupbtx[default:cite][alternative=authoryear]
> >     \usebtxdefinitions[aps]
> > 
> > but it seems that the setup command has no effect: the citations still
> > use numbers.
> 
> APS is an inherently numbered citation format.
> 
> If you have not defined a publisher, how should ANY format place the
> undefined publisher's name?

Simply leave it blank?

Aditya
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Re: BibTeX inproceedings entries not rendered correctly in APA style

[Alan Braslau]

On Fri, 28 May 2021 13:02:10 -0400 (EDT)
Aditya Mahajan <adityam@umich.edu> wrote:

> > If you have not defined a publisher, how should ANY format place the
> > undefined publisher's name?  
> 
> Simply leave it blank?

If there is no publisher, then @unpublished is a better category. APA
explicitly, and for good reason, accounts for self-publishing,
indicating that the Author was the publisher. This is why it works that
way.

If a publisher does not exist, was it published?

If the publisher is unknown, then why not state that:
publisher="unknown publisher", or whatever?

Alan
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Re: BibTeX inproceedings entries not rendered correctly in APA style

[Nicola]

On 2021-05-28, Alan Braslau <braslau.list@comcast.net> wrote:
> On Fri, 28 May 2021 13:02:10 -0400 (EDT)
> Aditya Mahajan <adityam@umich.edu> wrote:
>
>> > If you have not defined a publisher, how should ANY format place the
>> > undefined publisher's name?
>>
>> Simply leave it blank?
>
> If there is no publisher, then @unpublished is a better category. APA
> explicitly, and for good reason, accounts for self-publishing,
> indicating that the Author was the publisher.

Ah ok, that explains the output I was obtaining. So, I am using the
wrong bibliographic style for my purposes. In practice, at least in
Computer Science, publishers (and also editors) are often omitted in
references (it's more a "don't care", rather than a "don't know" thing,
though).

> If a publisher does not exist, was it published?
>
> If the publisher is unknown, then why not state that:
> publisher="unknown publisher", or whatever?

Strictly speaking, your reasoning makes perfect sense, and I am all for
enforcing constraints if a given bibliographic style requires them. But
then, there might be alternatives for when one does not need to adhere
to those styles. Does ConTeXt (LMTX) currently provide anything else
besides apa and aps?

I have read the BibTeX manual looong time ago, but I remember that there
were mandatory and optional fields for each reference type. My memory
may fail me, but I think that Editor and Publisher were not mandatory
fields for inproceedings and article (I think Publisher is mandatory for
book). Is there a bibliographic style in ConTeXt that follows those
rules?

Bibliography management is very sophisticated in ConTeXt (much more than
LaTeX) and I have not grasped all of its details yet. It seems to me
that it has also evolved quite a bit in recent years. So, the "ConTeXt
way" of doing bibliographies still eludes me to some extent.

Nicola

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Re: BibTeX inproceedings entries not rendered correctly in APA style

[Alan Braslau]

On Fri, 28 May 2021 19:52:19 -0000 (UTC)
Nicola <nvitacolonna@gmail.com> wrote:

> > If there is no publisher, then @unpublished is a better category.
> > APA explicitly, and for good reason, accounts for self-publishing,
> > indicating that the Author was the publisher.  
> 
> Ah ok, that explains the output I was obtaining. So, I am using the
> wrong bibliographic style for my purposes. In practice, at least in
> Computer Science, publishers (and also editors) are often omitted in
> references (it's more a "don't care", rather than a "don't know"
> thing, though).
> 
> > If a publisher does not exist, was it published?
> >
> > If the publisher is unknown, then why not state that:
> > publisher="unknown publisher", or whatever?  
> 
> Strictly speaking, your reasoning makes perfect sense, and I am all
> for enforcing constraints if a given bibliographic style requires
> them. But then, there might be alternatives for when one does not
> need to adhere to those styles. Does ConTeXt (LMTX) currently provide
> anything else besides apa and aps?
> 
> I have read the BibTeX manual looong time ago, but I remember that
> there were mandatory and optional fields for each reference type. My
> memory may fail me, but I think that Editor and Publisher were not
> mandatory fields for inproceedings and article (I think Publisher is
> mandatory for book). Is there a bibliographic style in ConTeXt that
> follows those rules?
> 
> Bibliography management is very sophisticated in ConTeXt (much more
> than LaTeX) and I have not grasped all of its details yet. It seems
> to me that it has also evolved quite a bit in recent years. So, the
> "ConTeXt way" of doing bibliographies still eludes me to some extent.

In writing the ConTeXt bibliography system, we tried to base this on
references, indeed following the original bibtex manual for its
definitions. The APA style follows the APA style guide as best as
possible.

The APS style is intended as a simple example of a numbered
bibliography minimalist style.

Multiple other styles exist out there, more or less well defined. The
problem is that most of them are not very rigorous, and they are
greatly abused. Many publishers follow their own (quirky) bibliography
styles.

The Context system started out as sort of a database handling
subsystem, useful in publishing. It is entirely tune-able, through
setups and parameters. However, the system is complex, so the
customization is not quite as easy as originally intended. Note that
the original bibtex system was conceived in order to have this
configurability, however few were those who mastered writing
bibliography styles, and even carefully crafted styles, for example as
implemented by the APS RevTeX, were buggy and had a number of known,
serious limitations requiring manual intervention.

We could, and have had the intention of, writing other bibliography
styles. But there must be a motivation as well as a clearly defined
specification, for otherwise we will be heading down a rabbit hole of
differing expectations and endless tweaking.

As to "don't care" concerning publishers, this is not very academic.
Indeed, many famous books have been published by various publishers, in
particular for different markets. It is important to say, for each one
might be slightly different, have different pagination for example, and
even certain edits of the text. One might also not pay attention to the
edition, but this too can lead to major differences (even, and
especially in computer science).


Thomas Schmitz, one of the originators of the bibliography project,
will tell you to take the APA style as a model, and then modify it as
you wish to your own needs. I further took this to heart, trying to
write the macros as somewhat standard definitions that one could modify
as needed without breaking the entire system.

And then there are clearly bugs that can be fixed. In the case of a
missing publisher, it is not simply left blank because the APA style
explicitly tells us to put "Author" when there is no defined publisher,
so this is a feature, not a bug.

Alan
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Re: BibTeX inproceedings entries not rendered correctly in APA style

[Rik Kabel]

On 5/28/2021 16:33, Alan Braslau wrote:
> On Fri, 28 May 2021 19:52:19 -0000 (UTC)
> Nicola <nvitacolonna@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>> If there is no publisher, then @unpublished is a better category.
>>> APA explicitly, and for good reason, accounts for self-publishing,
>>> indicating that the Author was the publisher.
>> Ah ok, that explains the output I was obtaining. So, I am using the
>> wrong bibliographic style for my purposes. In practice, at least in
>> Computer Science, publishers (and also editors) are often omitted in
>> references (it's more a "don't care", rather than a "don't know"
>> thing, though).
>>
>>> If a publisher does not exist, was it published?
>>>
>>> If the publisher is unknown, then why not state that:
>>> publisher="unknown publisher", or whatever?
>> Strictly speaking, your reasoning makes perfect sense, and I am all
>> for enforcing constraints if a given bibliographic style requires
>> them. But then, there might be alternatives for when one does not
>> need to adhere to those styles. Does ConTeXt (LMTX) currently provide
>> anything else besides apa and aps?
>>
>> I have read the BibTeX manual looong time ago, but I remember that
>> there were mandatory and optional fields for each reference type. My
>> memory may fail me, but I think that Editor and Publisher were not
>> mandatory fields for inproceedings and article (I think Publisher is
>> mandatory for book). Is there a bibliographic style in ConTeXt that
>> follows those rules?
>>
>> Bibliography management is very sophisticated in ConTeXt (much more
>> than LaTeX) and I have not grasped all of its details yet. It seems
>> to me that it has also evolved quite a bit in recent years. So, the
>> "ConTeXt way" of doing bibliographies still eludes me to some extent.
> In writing the ConTeXt bibliography system, we tried to base this on
> references, indeed following the original bibtex manual for its
> definitions. The APA style follows the APA style guide as best as
> possible.
>
> The APS style is intended as a simple example of a numbered
> bibliography minimalist style.
>
> Multiple other styles exist out there, more or less well defined. The
> problem is that most of them are not very rigorous, and they are
> greatly abused. Many publishers follow their own (quirky) bibliography
> styles.
>
> The Context system started out as sort of a database handling
> subsystem, useful in publishing. It is entirely tune-able, through
> setups and parameters. However, the system is complex, so the
> customization is not quite as easy as originally intended. Note that
> the original bibtex system was conceived in order to have this
> configurability, however few were those who mastered writing
> bibliography styles, and even carefully crafted styles, for example as
> implemented by the APS RevTeX, were buggy and had a number of known,
> serious limitations requiring manual intervention.
>
> We could, and have had the intention of, writing other bibliography
> styles. But there must be a motivation as well as a clearly defined
> specification, for otherwise we will be heading down a rabbit hole of
> differing expectations and endless tweaking.
>
> As to "don't care" concerning publishers, this is not very academic.
> Indeed, many famous books have been published by various publishers, in
> particular for different markets. It is important to say, for each one
> might be slightly different, have different pagination for example, and
> even certain edits of the text. One might also not pay attention to the
> edition, but this too can lead to major differences (even, and
> especially in computer science).
>
>
> Thomas Schmitz, one of the originators of the bibliography project,
> will tell you to take the APA style as a model, and then modify it as
> you wish to your own needs. I further took this to heart, trying to
> write the macros as somewhat standard definitions that one could modify
> as needed without breaking the entire system.
>
> And then there are clearly bugs that can be fixed. In the case of a
> missing publisher, it is not simply left blank because the APA style
> explicitly tells us to put "Author" when there is no defined publisher,
> so this is a feature, not a bug.
>
> Alan

The APA does not attempt to define bibliographies. It defines reference 
lists (and more specifically, reference lists for APA journal articles), 
and there is a difference. The reference list, as defined in the APA 
guide, simply exists to point the reader to the cited document (whatever 
'document' might mean). Bibliographies, as the APA guide acknowledges, 
can be much richer, although they do not say it that way.

Looking at the 6th edition of the APA guide (I have not reviewed the 7th 
edition guide, but as far as I know ConTeXt used the 6th edition), I 
note that example 36, a symposium contribution, does not have a 
publisher name. However, it does appear that ConTeXt would require a 
publisher for this and the following examples which have a DOI but no 
publisher. This may be an error, but whether on the part of the APA or 
ConTeXt or both I cannot say.

For books, the APA guide does not require a publisher if a URL is 
provided, and ConTeXt handles this properly. As with the use of DOIs for 
journal articles, this is consistent with the concept of a reference 
list, in which entries give only the information necessary to locate the 
document cited by the writer (with the usual caveats about the 
volatility and durability of electronic media and URLs).

With either reference lists or bibliographies I can imagine 
circumstances where it might be desirable to suppress one or more of the 
publisher, the date, the author, and the title. Consider a reference 
list of works by one author -- there is no need to state the author name 
in each entry. Similarly a list of works published in a given year, or 
by a specific publisher, or editions of one title. I do not mean to 
suggest that ConTeXt should support these, but simply suggest that even 
so-called 'required' fields may not always be required if they are implicit.

-- 
Rik

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