Bug in American Medical Association 11th Edition, on Conference Proceedings

[thelsevier]

Hello,

one of our users discovered an issue with the AMA style: for conference proceedings references with some combination of fields completed, it will generate a weird . ; sequence that is not correct.

Steps to reproduce:

1. navigate to the official style editor
2. click Edit on the AMA style (either search or scroll to it)
3. go to Example citations in the top right corner
4. select Citation 3
5. go to Advanced, and paste this reference in json format:

   [{
   "type": "paper-conference",
   "id": "test",
   "title": "User financing of rural handpump water services",
   "author": [
       {
           "family": "Carter",
           "given": "Richard C"
       },
       {
           "family": "Harvey",
           "given": "Erik"
       },
       {
           "family": "Casey",
           "given": "Vincent"
       }
   ],
   "container-title": "IRC Symposium: Pumps, Pipes and Promises",
   "issued": {
       "date-parts": [
           [
               2010
           ]
       ]
   }
   }]

Expected output:

Carter RC, Harvey E, Casey V. User financing of rural handpump water services. In: IRC Symposium: Pumps, Pipes and Promises; 2010.

Actual output:

Carter RC, Harvey E, Casey V. User financing of rural handpump water services. In: IRC Symposium: Pumps, Pipes and Promises. ; 2010.

As you can see, there's an extra dot and space after the container-title field, which should not be there.

Thank you for your time!

[thelsevier]

You may also refer to this video reproducing the steps above. Thanks!

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/d5c1e008-0e4f-4961-9ff8-d869d55409f8

[POBrien333]

You could/should add "WaterAid" as a publisher for that citation.

[thelsevier]

They should, I agree. But shouldn't the style itself accommodate scenarios where this field is missing? For instance IEEE generates this line without a publisher:

R. C. Carter, E. Harvey, and V. Casey, “User financing of rural handpump water services,”
in IRC Symposium: Pumps, Pipes and Promises, 2010. 

And this with a publisher:

R. C. Carter, E. Harvey, and V. Casey, “User financing of rural handpump water services,”
in IRC Symposium: Pumps, Pipes and Promises, WaterAid, 2010. 

(line breaks are from me to avoid horizontal scroll)

As you can see, there aren't 2 commas or something just because the publisher field is missing, so in the case of AMA it looks maybe like a style definition bug, or maybe an issue with the style itself?

The user gave us this link for reference, not sure what to make of it: https://sheridancollege.libguides.com/c.php?g=704219&p=5008563 . Thank you!