[seqfan] Re: Format for references in OEIS.

[Alonso Del Arte]

Yes, there is disagreement. Part of the issue here is the dividing lines
between things we want to keep for the sake of tradition, things we want to
keep for the sake of convenience, and things we want to keep due to an
irrational attachment to the way things were.

Consider this mildly contrived example:

C. M. Bender & G. V. Dunne, Polynomials and operator orderings, J. Math.
Phys. 29 ('88), 1727-1.

"C." abbreviates "Carl". Maybe we're not worried about Carl M. Bender being
confused for Clark M. Bender. In my opinion, it is not a good practice to
continue to abbreviate first names (or in some cases middle names as
applicable).

I feel differently about abbreviating journal titles, even though sometimes
the memory and bandwidth savings are just as negligible (e.g., "Phys." for
"Physics"). I don't worry at all that "Math. Rep." could be
"Mathematicians' Repetitions". The MR abbreviations may be entirely
practical.

Trying to abbreviate page numbers could sometimes lead to the mistake
illustrated above: the paper starts on page 1727 and ends on page 1731, not
page 1721.

Even if we were to decide a consistent format needs to be adhered to, the
most practical way to go about it is to enforce it for new entries and
gradually bring older entries into line.

Al


On Sat, Dec 7, 2013 at 5:13 PM, L. Edson Jeffery <lejeffery2 at gmail.com>wrote:

> There seems to be disagreement regarding the format for references. For
> journal references, in particular, should the preferred format for the
> journal title be as adopted by Mathematical Reviews?
>
> This practice is widely accepted in professional and technical
> publications. An example is having a preference for J. Integer Seq.,
> instead of Journal of Integer Sequences.
>
> A comprehensive list (as of Oct 2011) of journal title abbreviations
> adopted by Mathematical Reviews can be found at the following link:
>
> http://www.ams.org/msnhtml/serials.pdf
>
> Ed Jeffery
>
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> Seqfan Mailing list - http://list.seqfan.eu/
>



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Alonso del Arte
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