[seqfan] Re: Referencing the OEIS

[Mitch Harris]

On Thu, Nov 20, 2008 at 2:23 PM, Jonathan Sondow
<jsondow at alumni.princeton.edu> wrote:
> Dear Neil,
>
>> Dear Seqfans,  thanks for that discussion about "author".
>>
>> What I will do is add something to the section of the Welcome
>> page about referencing the OEIS.
>>
>> Neil
>
> A few months ago in the section of the Welcome page about referencing the
> OEIS:
>
> http://www.research.att.com/~njas/sequences/Seis.html#reference
>
> in the subsection Referencing a Particular Sequence you wrote:
>
> "A text reference might say:
>
> "N. J. A. Sloane, (2008), Sequence A000108 in The On-Line Encyclopedia of
> Integer Sequences, published electronically at
> www.research.att.com/~njas/sequences/
>
> "or
>
> "J. H. Conway, Sequence A007970 in N. J. A. Sloane (Ed.), The On-Line
> Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences (2008), published electronically at
> http://www.research.att.com/~njas/sequences/A007970."
>
> However, the first of these two examples is ambiguous, because you are at
> the same time the author of Sequence A000108 and also the Editor of the
> OEIS. So if a reader of the Welcome page does not know that you are the
> author of that sequence, he/she may misunderstand and think that ALL text
> references to particular sequences should list you as the author.
>
> In order to avoid this ambiguity, I think it would be better to omit the
> first example and give only the second example (Sequence A007970).
>
> Best regards,
> Jonathan

Just to put my opinion out there...

As much as I love getting the recognition for submitting a sequence to
the OEIS, it feels a little weird getting a reference for it as a
publication. Taking the OED and words as an example, the credit is
given -in- the dictionary, and one might have a reference for a
definition of a word that cites the OED, but it would be odd in that
bibliographic reference to mention the person who -found- the quote in
the literature (written by yet a third party) that used that word.

Which is to say I'd be more comfortable with something like just
"A007970 Neil Sloane (ed) OEIS....". Accessing the OEIS will tell you
the name of the original submitter.

-- 
Mitch Harris