[seqfan] Re: Format for references in OEIS.

[Neil Sloane]

I am strongly opposed to requiring a rigid format for references.
I add a lot of references myself, which is very time-consuming,
and if I had to put them into
a standard format it would take
twice as long and I just wouldn't do it.
Plus there really cannot be a standard format which
will apply to journal articles, conf proceedings,
theses, preprints, newspaper articles, articles
on home pages, blog posts,
etc

Plus we have about 240,000 refs and links right now (I just
counted them) and it would be impossible to
make them uniform.

References are like people - or dogs - they come in many
different formats and we just have to be tolerant!

Neil




On Sun, Dec 8, 2013 at 7:45 PM, Alonso Del Arte <alonso.delarte at gmail.com>wrote:

> 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
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> >
> > Seqfan Mailing list - http://list.seqfan.eu/
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Alonso del Arte
> Author at SmashWords.com<
> https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/AlonsoDelarte>
> Musician at ReverbNation.com <http://www.reverbnation.com/alonsodelarte>
>
> _______________________________________________
>
> Seqfan Mailing list - http://list.seqfan.eu/
>



-- 
Dear Friends, I have now retired from AT&T. New coordinates:

Neil J. A. Sloane, President, OEIS Foundation
11 South Adelaide Avenue, Highland Park, NJ 08904, USA.
Also Visiting Scientist, Math. Dept., Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ.
Phone: 732 828 6098; home page: http://NeilSloane.com
Email: njasloane at gmail.com