[seqfan] Re: Changing References to Links

[Richard Mathar]

http://list.seqfan.eu/pipermail/seqfan/2011-February/007147.html

ds> From: David Scambler
ds> To: "seqfan at list.seqfan.eu" <seqfan at list.seqfan.eu>
ds> Date: Sun, 13 Feb 2011 22:51:32 -0600
ds> Subject: [seqfan] Changing References to Links
ds> 
ds> What is the etiquette for changing a reference to a link when you 
ds> notice that the article is on the web?
ds> 
ds> For example. In sequences A091869, A092107, A098747
ds> 
ds> Y. Sun, The statistic "number of udu's" in Dyck paths, 
ds> Discrete Math., 237 (2004), 177-186.
ds> 
ds> is available at http://www.combinatorics.cn/publications/papers/2004/udu.pdf

If there is a reference, move it to the link section and delete the reference.
There is *no* reason to keep both.

It does not matter whether this is subscription based or a "freely available"
article; a clickable interface is just better than forcing everybody through
a manual search through some local library tools; we are living in an Internet
age. Also note that some URL's become freely available after a "moving wall"
of restricted access; nobody would not want to re-edit the OEIS again to keep
track of these time-dependent things.

If there are actually two versions, one "official", which typically means
that some publisher's doi is available, and another more freely available
on some author's web page for example, it is reasonable to keep both.
This is either done by creating two link lines :

  A. Uthor, <a href="http://dx.doi.org/hubblemumble">Some stuffy things</a> J. of Profanity 20 (1999) p 99
  A. Uthor, <a href="http://www.author.org</a> [preprint]

or putting both on the same line (that will work with our current parser)
in the following style:

  A. Uthor, <a href="http://dx.doi.org/hubblemumble">Some stuffy things</a> J. of Everything 0 (1999) p 99-999, <a href="http://www.autch.org">some stuffy thingies</a> [author preprint]

Of course, even the articles that are accessible by subscription only should
be transferred to the link section. Again, note that this is a professional
database, and it saves time to many of us if we need only a few seconds to
reach out to the article contents.

Even if you have only access to the abstract, or to the MR reference
of the http://www.ams.org/mathscinet : linking is better than referencing,
no doubt.

Richard Mathar