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September 14, 2012
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I love almost everything about my job as a science librarian at a primarily undergraduate college. The one exception is when I am called upon to teach students how to format their citations for the Reference list at the end of their papers.
I really dislike formatting citations. I dislike it so much that I have let citation style be a primary factor in which journal I publish in (I particularly hate footnotes).
Just a few of the citation manuals I consult
One of the troublesome aspects of citation for my students is that they will be called upon to learn multiple citation styles and formats over the course of their college career. Sometimes they will be asked to use well developed styles with thick manuals – APA, MLA, CSE. Other times, students will be asked to format their citations in the same way as a particular journal – and the journal might not provide clear directions for them.
Of course, this mimics what researchers go through as they submit manuscripts to multiple journals, each requiring different formats and citation styles.
While my students might not be off the hook, Elsevier just announced a new program which will ease the burden on researchers just a bit. Called “Your Paper, Your Way”, the pilot program allows researchers to submit manuscripts using just about any format they like, as long as certain pieces of information are included. If a paper is accepted, authors will then be responsible for converting the formatting to meet the journal’s style.
While I would love to see a reduction in the number of citation styles used for the final articles (Elsevier alone has 10 different styles), this is a good news for authors and will save them time. If a manuscript is accepted, Elsevier will also do the work of converting the reference list to the journal’s style.
This is a very author-friendly move, and Elsevier needs some author-friendly press to ease the tensions that developed between the publishing company and researchers in the wake of the Cost of Knowledge boycott.
At the moment, this is a pilot with just one journal, but it will soon be expanded to more than 50 Elsevier journals. I hope to see it applied across all of Elsevier’s publications, and I hope to see other publishers follow suit.
About the Author: Bonnie J. M. Swoger is a Science and Technology Librarian at a small public undergraduate institution in upstate New York, SUNY Geneseo. She teaches students about the science literature, helps faculty and students with library research questions and leads library assessment efforts. She has a BS in Geology from St. Lawrence University, an MS in Geology from Kent State University and an MLS from the University at Buffalo. She would love to have some free time in which to indulge in hobbies. She blogs at the Undergraduate Science Librarian and can be found on twitter @bonnieswoger. Follow on Twitter @bonnieswoger.
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There is no plausible and defensible reason for multiple citation styles.
The only reason for a citation is to allow the reader to identify the source and then get it.
With Google Scholar, pretty much all that is needed is the article title. Citation styles that don’t include the title are that much harder to find. PubMed searches by author require that periods after initials be removed.
Why do some journals require good identifying information in citations to be removed (article titles) and bad characters to be inserted (periods after initials)? Because they can and it puffs up journal editors’ egos by compelling authors to jump through hoops. For-profit journal editors can then point to their unique citation style as part of the editorial process “value-added” so it can be used to justify obscenely high article prices.
Yet another reason to boycott for-profit journals with byzantine citation styles.
Link to thisNo! If we standardize citation styles, or worse, make adherence to a diverse set of esoteric styles depending on context non-existent, we will be destroying the last remaining stranglehold of the byzantine roots from which Western academia emerged centuries ago!!!
Link to thisHello Ms. Swoger. I actually registered here in order to comment. The act of recognizing other people’s work, regardless of what form that work takes, is not only good manners but also a way to say thank you to the producer of that work. I realize exactly how frustrating the citations and attributions can be for students and authors but am very happy that the recognition remains to be required. I thought you may be interested in http://curatorscode.org where a dedicated group is trying to simplify the act of making attributions. This is truly an information era in our history with all info being tied to other info before becoming attached to a whole different idea … the originator of the information sometimes becomes lost by the users of that information. The curators code may be a way to simplify, and make it easier for users to make the proper recognition. I think it could also be helpful to academia if less than ridged formality could be accepted.
Link to thisI’m Dorothy Allen, branded as The Maven Of Social Influence, for Social Marketing purposes. Thank you for allowing this comment.
Hi Dorothy – I absolutely agree that recognizing the creator of a work you are using, referring to or that assisted in the intellectual development of your ideas is a vital part of discourse. What I object to are the petty details of doing so. For example, just yesterday I learned that in the Turabian citation style, when using in text citations and a reference list, article titles are in sentence case, but if you are using footnotes and a bibliography, article titles should be in title case! It is these type of details that frustrate students and scholars alike.
Link to this