How to cite documents prepared by a planning committee and a consultant?

July 12, 2013 9:37 AM

With complications, of course.

I'm editing a large report that cites dozens of municipal land use planning documents. These are all the same type of municipality (small, rural), all involve the same type of planning committee, and all used a consulting firm in some way (sometimes the same firm). Only in rare cases is the authorship of these plans clear, more often it's a bit muddled. I have googled / looked in multiple style guides and don't see much that addresses this.

Example 1 front matter states:

"Land use plan for [municipality], final report
[name of Planning Team]
[name of Consulting Firm],
in association with [planning committee for municipality]."

--> first author = Planning Team... with firm and committee as second and third authors ?

Example 2 states:

[Project title]
Prepared for: [municipality]
Prepared by: [main consulting firm], [subcontractor]
...Copyright 2002 [main consulting firm] in association with [municipal planning committee]

--> cite as consulting firm (first author), planning committee (second author) ?


Example 3, contains no real title page, but opens with a legal resolution that states:

"[municipal planning committee] led the development of the first planning document in 2003...it was reviewed and updated in 2008 by [municipal planning committee]", and later, "[municipal planning committee] worked with consulting firm [X, name of principal] to revise and update the plan."

--> cite as planning committee as first author?

Example 4, title page:

[consulting firm]
in association with [planning committee]

--> cite as firm (first author), committee (second author) ?


Example 5, also lacks a title page, but says in the introduction:

"[planning committee], municipal leadership, and [consulting firm, name of principal] developed the current plan..."

--> which brings up other cases where the "consulting firm" is also an individual and was cited as such, e.g. "JJ Abrams & Co." was listed as Abrams J in the reference list. Which is correct?

Help?

posted by Lot's ex-girlfriend to Writing & Language (2 answers total)

Best answer: I went through this recently from your perspective (preparing a report with citations) and now I'm part of a group that commissions these sorts of documents. I would simply cite the City of _______ as the author and proceed to the title, followed by "edited by ____ consultants" as is suggested here: http://library.mcmaster.ca/govpubs/cite
posted by M.C. Lo-Carb! at 9:51 AM on July 12, 2013

You get to make up your own style! Exciting, isn't it.

Key things: be consistent in how you cite - order of author/title/date should be the same from cite to cite, so even if some cites have less or more info than others in terms of authors or editors, the order of what's cited should still be the same; decide whether report titles will be in quotes, italicized, or bold (not that, please, but you could if you wanted to), and stick with it.

There is no one right way to do the kind of thing you're doing. As long as you're consistent and include enough information so that someone reading the cite could go find the original if they wanted to, you're doing good.
posted by rtha at 10:49 AM on July 12, 2013