Create new editorial role "organizer" in biblatex

Question

In the Portuguese language it is frequent for publishers to give different editorial role names to the general "editor" of a given book. In particular, they use somewhat interchangeably the terms "editor" and "organizador" (organizer), and sometimes "coordenador" (coordinator) as well. I'm not sure what's the usage in other Portuguese countries, but this is the case in Brazil. I've already come across "organizador" in Spanish as well.

Even though what each of these different names entails is probably very similar, from the point of view of giving a precise reference, one should stick to the denomination the publisher used. But with biblatex this is somewhat complicated, because there is no corresponding editorial role, with associated strings, to use.

I'm aware that one can insert an arbitrary string on the entry's editortype field. But this "solution" is far from ideal, because it is very sensitive to later changes in style or style formatting, leaving in your .bib file a difficult to trace non standard string. It is also sensitive to the respective language in use. Suppose I develop my paper in biblatex authoryear style, and later, in trying to submit it to a journal, the journal requires Chicago, APA, or some other style which defines different bibstrings. Or suppose I used initially the option abbreviate=false and later decide to change it and use abbreviate=true. Or if I decide to use biblatex's option autolang=other, when I initially hadn't done so. In all of these cases, if I had defined an arbitrary string in the entry's editortype I would have to correct each one of the entries. Which is clearly error prone.

In rethinking this problem, I figured out a workaround, which is to "steal" a less used editorial role, e.g. continuator, and redefine its strings accordingly. A MWE, using biblatex authoryear and this workaround is the following:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[english,portuguese]{babel}
\usepackage[style=american]{csquotes}
\usepackage[bibstyle=authoryear,backend=biber]{biblatex}
\usepackage{filecontents}

\begin{filecontents*}{organizer.bib}

@InBook{Abreu1990,
    author       = {Abreu, Marcelo de Paiva},
    title        = {Crise, crescimento e modernização autoritária: 1930--1945},
    booktitle    = {A Ordem do Progresso},
    date         = {1990},
    editor       = {Abreu, Marcelo de Paiva},
    booksubtitle = {Cem anos de política econômica republicana, 1889-1989},
    publisher    = {Campus},
    location     = {Rio de Janeiro},
    chapter      = {3},
    pages        = {73--104},
    editortype   = {continuator},
}

@Book{Abreu1990book,
    title    = {A Ordem do Progresso},
    date         = {1990},
    editor       = {Abreu, Marcelo de Paiva},
    subtitle = {Cem anos de política econômica republicana, 1889-1989},
    publisher    = {Campus},
    location     = {Rio de Janeiro},
    editortype   = {continuator},
}

@InBook{Bergsman1978,
    author       = {Bergsman, Joel},
    title        = {A política comercial no pós-guerra},
    booktitle    = {Formação econômica do Brasil},
    date         = {1978},
    editor       = {Versiani, Flávio Rabelo and Barros, José Roberto Mendonça de},
    booksubtitle = {A experiência da industrialização},
    edition      = {1st, rev.\ ed.},
    publisher    = {Saraiva},
    location     = {São Paulo},
    pages        = {391--410},
    editortype   = {continuator},
}

@Book{BastosFonseca2012,
    title = {A Era Vargas},
    date    = {2012},
    editor     = {Bastos, Pedro Paulo Zahluth and Fonseca, Pedro Cezar Dutra},
    subtitle   = {Desenvolvimentismo, economia e sociedade},
    publisher  = {Editora Unesp},
    editortype = {continuator},
}

\end{filecontents*}


\DefineBibliographyStrings{portuguese}{%
      continuator      = {org\adddot},
      continuators     = {orgs\adddot},
      bycontinuator    = {org\adddotspace por},
}

\DefineBibliographyStrings{english}{%
    continuator      = {org\adddot},
    continuators     = {orgs\adddot},
    bycontinuator    = {org\adddotspace by},
}


\addbibresource{organizer.bib}


\begin{document}

\nocite{*}
\printbibliography
\selectlanguage{english}
\printbibliography

\end{document}

Which produces the expected output:

However, this solution is also not ideal, for if one happens to have a reference with the selected editorial role, she is stuck. Also, if I happen to use the same .bib file for another project and forget to redefine the continuator strings, things will get pretty messed up.

I was then wondering if it is possible to define a new editorial role "organizer", with corresponding strings, to be called by the entry's editortype field.

Ideally, the solution would be style agnostic. But if this is not possible, a solution for the authoryear biblatex style, with some general guidelines as to how one should go about to do the same in her style of choice, would be greatly appreciated.

Of course, if I'm approaching the problem from a wrong perspective and there's a better and simpler way to deal with the issue, I'll be glad to know.

Answer 1

This is even easier than you thought. biblatex checks if it 'knows' (i.e. has the bibstrings) for the type of editor in editortype. If it knows the bibstrings, it uses them, if it does not it just prints whatever is in there directly.

The only thing we need to do to make this run is to define the three bibstrings

\NewBibliographyString{organizer}
\NewBibliographyString{organizers}
\NewBibliographyString{byorganizer}

and gives its values as you did

\DefineBibliographyStrings{portuguese}{%
  organizer      = {org\adddot},
  organizers     = {orgs\adddot},
  byorganizer    = {org\adddotspace por},
}

\DefineBibliographyStrings{english}{%
  organizer      = {org\adddot},
  organizers     = {orgs\adddot},
  byorganizer    = {org\adddotspace by},
}

We can now use

editortype = {organizer},

in the bib file.

This definitely works for all standard styles and should work for most custom styles on CTAN (certainly for the well-written ones).