Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!husc6!cmcl2!phri!murphy From: murphy@phri.UUCP (Ellen Murphy) Newsgroups: comp.text Subject: Re: Need help with weirdo format for bib Message-ID: <2811@phri.UUCP> Date: Wed, 22-Jul-87 21:39:40 EDT Article-I.D.: phri.2811 Posted: Wed Jul 22 21:39:40 1987 Date-Received: Sat, 25-Jul-87 01:48:58 EDT References: <2808@phri.UUCP> <489@elbereth.rutgers.edu> Reply-To: murphy@phri.UUCP (Ellen Murphy) Organization: Public Health Research Inst. (NY, NY) Lines: 69 In article <2808@phri.UUCP> roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith) asks for help with an unusual bib format, and also complains: >> I'm pissed! I mean, *Jeeze*, why does every single goddamn >> publisher have to go invent a new and incompatible format for references? In <489@elbereth.rutgers.edu> cje (Chris Jarocha-Ernst) replies: >One might make a similar argument against researchers "wasting" their time >writing an article with correct grammar. After all, an editor can always >correct it, right? Correct grammer is extremely important in conveying information to the reader. The placement of punctuation in the reference list, or the slightly different ways that journals can find to alphabetize the same list, conveys no information whatsoever. Unfortunately, journals pay far less attention to grammar than to the piddly details of citations. >Most journals in a field follow a reference format agreed to by a >professional association in that field, not one determined by the whim >of an editor or publisher. The association has chosen or developed >that reference format because they feel it's the one that makes the >references easiest for their readers to understand (and therefore use, Not at all. In my field (molecular biology) there are about 40 journals that I ought to read, and it is rare to find two that format the references the same way (the only exceptions are the journals published by the American Society for Microbiology, one of the many professional associations in the field). The publisher, not the professional associations, decide on these details, and they clearly do not have their readers' best interests in mind. If they did, all citations would include titles and trailing page numbers and would be listed in alphabetical (not citation) order. The journals that omit titles do so to save space (read: money). I also know of one case in which the "whim of the editor" decided the citation format (Academic Press's journal "Plasmid")--and note that other Academic Press journals are differently formatted. > Programs like bib were written to free the author from having to keep >track of every tittle and jot of reference formats, plus reducing the >amount of time (and thus money) spent on copy editing. Let the dumb >machine do the mechanical work like placing semicolons and converting >to boldface. I agree, and bib is great in that it lets me delay the formatting decision as long as I want, or reformat when a paper is rejected and has to go elsewhere--not that that ever happens :-). So why do the copy editors waste their time adding printers marks to my manuscripts which are already correctly formatted with respect to boldface and italics? >If one user at Roy's site is submitting to this journal, presumably other >users will, too, over time. Just for the record, I'm that user, and the paper is for an obscure symposium volume that nobody here is ever likely to publish in again. >There are different reference formats for different purposes, just as there >are different programming languages for different purposes. Changing the placement of commas, semicolons and bold vs. italic doesn't serve any useful purpose in citation lists, in spite of your concern that somebody might mistake a volume for a page number. These things do make a difference in chemical formulas, genetic nomenclature and programming languages, and the professional societies have rightly spent their time developing standards, to which all the journals adhere. I only wish that somebody would do the same for citation formats. Ellen Murphy Public Health Research Institute