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United Nations DESA Zotero Style

This CSL style is for United Nations publications and related references in author-date format. It was created to match the UN style guide as closely as possible for Zotero output.

UN style guide: https://www.un.org/dgacm/en/content/editorial-manual

Main style file:

  • united-nations-desa.csl

Upstream CSL PR:

Zotero Data Entry Guide (Specific UN Cases)

Use these patterns to get the expected UN-style output.

General rule for organizations:

  • Enter UN bodies/agencies as single-field institutional authors (not split first/last names), for example United Nations, United Nations, Security Council, UNCTAD, UNESCO.

1) UN publication with sales number

  • Item type: Book or Report
  • Key fields:
    • Author (institutional): United Nations (or relevant UN body)
    • Title: full publication title
    • Date: publication date/year
    • Loc. in Archive: sales number only (for example E.24.II.C.1)
  • Result behavior: style prints Sales No. E.24.II.C.1.

2) UN resolution (General Assembly / Security Council / other bodies)

  • Item type: Statute (recommended)
  • Key fields:
    • Author (institutional): issuing body (for example United Nations or United Nations, Security Council)
    • Title: resolution title
    • Date: date of adoption/issue
    • Number: UN symbol (for example A/RES/79/10, S/RES/2722 (2024))
  • Result behavior: symbol is printed as entered in Number.

3) Secretary-General report (for example to ECOSOC)

  • Item type: Report
  • Key fields:
    • Author (institutional): United Nations
    • Title: report title (for example Report of the Secretary-General on ...)
    • Number: document symbol (for example E/CN.16/2025/2)
    • Date: full date when available
    • Optional: Place and Publisher
  • Result behavior: report title is followed by the UN symbol and date details.

4) UN web/database references

  • Item type: Web Page, Dataset, or Software (prefer these over relying on Type: in Extra)
  • Key fields:
    • Author (institutional) when available
    • Title
    • Date (if known)
    • URL
    • Accessed
  • Result behavior: style prints Available at ... and Accessed on ... when metadata is present.

5) Avoid author grouping/sorting splits

  • If a UN item should group under United Nations, do not leave Author empty.
  • Do not rely on Publisher alone to infer authorship.

Non-UN Data Entry Pitfalls (Important)

These are common non-UN metadata issues that can change output formatting.

1) Organization as author

  • Enter organizations (for example World Health Organization, International Monetary Fund) as institutional authors in a single field.

2) Report items need a creator

  • For Report records, always enter Author (or Editor) to ensure stable title rendering and grouping.

3) Report numbers

  • Use Number as numeric only when you want No. X.
  • Use Number as text/symbol for values like DP2003-71 or similar non-numeric IDs.

4) No-author records

  • Add Short Title to improve in-text citation readability.

5) Web/data/software records

  • Prefer item types Web Page, Dataset, or Software for online resources.
  • Fill URL and Accessed explicitly.
  • Do not rely only on Type: in Extra for behavior control.

6) Journal article fields

  • Use dedicated fields for Volume, Issue, and Pages (not Extra) to get correct vol., No., p./pp. formatting.

7) Chapter in edited volume

  • Use Book Section (not Book) and fill Book Title, Editor, Publisher, and Place.

Testing

Test files:

  • tests/un-style-test.rdf (fixture dataset to import into Zotero)
  • tests/un-style-guide-reference.pdf (combined UN style-guide reference pages)

How to run a style check:

  1. In Zotero, import tests/un-style-test.rdf (File -> Import).
  2. Ensure the style united-nations-desa.csl is installed in Zotero.
  3. Select the imported test items and create a bibliography with the style United Nations - DESA.
  4. Export or print the generated bibliography to PDF.
  5. Compare the generated bibliography against tests/un-style-guide-reference.pdf and confirm formatting and ordering behavior.

Pending Issues

Issue Why Not Addressed Yet
Author-publisher deduplication for organization names CSL does not provide a reliable, low-risk way to suppress publisher text only when it duplicates institutional author strings across varied metadata patterns.
Initial-article normalization in sorting (for example ignoring leading "The") Zotero/CSL sorting does not provide a robust style-level mechanism to normalize leading articles without side effects.
Conditional URL omission for easily discoverable web sources The UN guide treats this as editorial judgment; CSL has no context signal for "easily located through search."
Some document records with Type stored only in Extra may not print URL/access text In Zotero RDF, Type: ... in Extra is not always mapped to CSL genre/type fields consistently, so one edge-case document can bypass expected Available at ... rendering.
Automatic inference of the phrase "United Nations publication" Reliable detection cannot be derived deterministically from author/publisher metadata alone, so this remains a manual/data-driven decision.
Masthead document symbol/date ordering UN masthead examples place date before symbol (for example ... 12 December. S/...), but applying that reliably only to masthead-like reports is not deterministic with current CSL/Zotero metadata signals.
Organization grouping can split when institutional author is missing in item data Kept as a caution test case (for example, Reimagining industrial policy for sustainable development: a framework for the 21st century): if a UN item is entered without an institutional author and relies only on publisher/container metadata, repeated-author grouping may not join the main United Nations run. Data correction is preferred over aggressive CSL inference.