[seqfan] Re: A032355 extension; and comment on b-files

[Brendan McKay]

Allan and Neil are not the publisher.  OEIS is the publisher.
If there is an analogy from ordinary academic publishing, Allan
and Neil acted as editors.  It is as if the editor of a journal
published something in the journal, with my name on it as author,
without asking me. I would be upset if that happened. I believe
that I, and I alone, have the right to put my name onto a
published work as author.  If an editor wants to republish my
data, there is a standard method: they give themselves as
author/compiler and credit me for the content.

Note that usual OEIS practice agrees with this: the AUTHOR field
gives the person who added the sequence to OEIS, not the person
who computed the numbers (unless that is the same person).
Why are b-files treated differently?

I hope nobody thinks I'm criticising Allan and Neil here.
I just want to argue for an improvement in presentation.

Cheers,
Brendan.


Date: Sun, 20 Apr 2014 11:02:28 -0400 (EDT)
From:franktaw at netscape.net
To:seqfan at list.seqfan.eu
Subject: [seqfan] Re: A032355 extension; and comment on b-files
Message-ID:<8D12AC0AE8347F8-814-354DE at webmail-d286.sysops.aol.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"; format=flowed

On 2.2, I think you're wrong. Allan and Neil are acting as publisher
here; you credit the author, not the publisher.

Franklin T. Adams-Watters

-----Original Message-----
From: Brendan McKay<Brendan.McKay at anu.edu.au>
To: seqfan<seqfan at list.seqfan.eu>
Sent: Sun, Apr 20, 2014 2:00 am
Subject: [seqfan]  Re: A032355 extension; and comment on b-files


Hi, I checked the b-file that is now present.  Two unrelated comments:

1.  It would be good to add the number*all*  vertex-transitive cubic
graphs, not necessarily connected.  That follows using one of the
standard transformations.

2. I know this comment is too late, but I'm a bit concerned about how
b-files are presented.

  1. Are they an official part of OEIS?  If so, why are they in the LINKS
     section looking like external sources? This also makes them harder
     to find on the page, which is what prompted this comment.
  2. The way they are presented is misleading.  This example: "Primož
     Potočnik, Pablo Spiga and Gabriel Verret, Table of n, a(n) for n =
     2..640".  That is wrong; it is not a work of Potočnik et al..  It is
     a work of Allan and Neil based on the work of Potočnik et al..  If
     Allan and Neil made an error in creating the file, Potočnik et al.
     will get the blame. (Think of an example which needs more processing
     than mere copying to see why this is not mere nitpicking.) Were
     Potočnik et al. even asked if they want their name on this new work?
     What I'm saying is that this violates the usual practices of
     authorship and attribution.

The cheapest way to fix 2.2 would be to rephrase the link like "Table
of
n, a(n) for n = 2..640, based on Primož Potočnik, Pablo Spiga and
Gabriel Verret".

Cheers, Brendan.