[seqfan] Re: Use of "et al." in references and links

[Brendan McKay]

It is quite unusual for books to have more than 2-3 editors, including
anthologies, but if there are more "et al." seems reasonable.  In the case
of authors, I think the limit should be higher, say 8-10.  Because the
tradition in mathematics is to list the authors in alphabetical order,
naming just the first few will often leave off the authors who most
deserve the credit.

Brendan.

On 28/6/2023 6:48 am, Pontus von Brömssen wrote:
> Thanks Robert and Amiram. I agree, in both those cases (links to web pages
> where the list of authors may change, and editors of anthologies) it seems
> reasonable to use "et al.".
>
> What about "regular" books/articles? I easily found examples with just
> three authors where "et al." is used: the Biggs et al. reference in
> A000272, the Carlitz et al. link in A000575, and the Metropolis et al. link
> in A000804. In those cases I definitely think that all three names should
> be there, but should we have a limit on the number of authors above which
> "et al." should be used? For search purposes it would be an advantage if
> all authors were listed.
>
> All the best,
>
> Pontus
>
>
> On Tue, Jun 27, 2023 at 9:46 PM Amiram Eldar <amiram.eldar at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hello,
>>
>> Sometimes the paper is published within a book and the book may have many
>> authors (usually editors).
>> In this case "et al." may be accepted for the editors of the book,
>> otherwise the full reference may be too long.
>>
>> Best,
>> Amiram
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Jun 27, 2023 at 7:07 PM Pontus von Brömssen <
>> pontus.von.bromssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> I would've thought that all authors (maybe up to a reasonably high limit,
>>> like 20) should be listed in the references/links items, and that "et
>> al."
>>> be used only in in-text citations in comments, formulas, etc. But
>> searching
>>> for *link:"et al"|ref:"et al"* gives 2779 hits. (Some of these may be
>> false
>>> positives for various reasons.) A363892 is a recent example; if one would
>>> want to find sequences that have refs/links (co-)authored by Bernd
>>> Sturmfels, this sequence would be difficult to find.
>>>
>>> I'm not going to fix all these, but if there is an OEIS guideline or
>>> consensus about listing all authors in refs/links items I will add it to
>> my
>>> list of "things to fix when I see them".
>>>
>>> Best regards,
>>>
>>> Pontus
>>>
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>>> Seqfan Mailing list - http://list.seqfan.eu/
>>>
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