In article <Mar.10.14.37.26.1993.5351 at net.bio.net>, kristoff at net.bio.net (David
Kristofferson) says:
>>FORSDYKE at QUCDN.QueensU.CA writes:
>>>In article <Mar.8.12.17.18.1993.8971 at net.bio.net>, kristoff at net.bio.net>(David
>>Kristofferson) says:
>>>>>>> But my overall feeling is that the proposers are not really biting the
>t
>>>bullet
>>>> Why not set up a fully fledged primary electronic journal?
>>>>>>Find us some editors (who could convince authors to submit manuscripts
>>>too!) and we'd be glad to.
>>>Dave
>> Whether you have Abstracts or a fully-fledged electronic journal
>> you are still going to have readers who want to CITE what they
>> read. Perhaps the first step is to agree on some way of citing the
>> electronicmedia which is in line with the way we cite the paper a
>> media.
>> Authors will submit IF they know that their work will be cited.
> They
>> will NOT submit if there is no simple way of citing their work in e
>> the
>> paper media. You will recall David that I have previously suggesteda
>> citation format by which a day is a "volume" and a second is a "
>"page
>> This communication could be cited as:
>> Forsdyke, D.R. (1993) Bionet.jrnl.note 308, 1729est.
>> (The est should be corrected to gmt.)
>> Sincerely, Don Forsdyke
>>>I would suggest that, for an abstract newsgroup, the citation would
>properly be to the paper journal in which the actual article appeared.
>The citation to the newsgroup posting of the abstract would not
>matter.
True, but (i) some articles do not get accepted so the abstract
would be the only source,
(ii) the abstract date could precede the article by sever
al months. So no citations would be possible in that
period.
>If we are talking about a complete electronic journal, I'm not
>convinced that the people will refrain from submitting simply because
>there is no standard reference format. There are two key problems.
>>(1) If there are no recognized leaders in the field using the medium,
>it will not be successful.
Big name use certainly helps, but it is not critical.
Once biologists begin to see "Bionet.x" regularly cited in the
papers they read, they will want to get in on the action. They
will want to know what Bionet is and how to contribute to it.
>(2) It is still a bit of a problem for most biologists to include and
>view high resolution pictures on their computers;
So we will have to start without pictures. Tables can say a lot.
The important thing is to start.
I do not see
>it as my individual role to impose a citation format on everybody.
Not "impose", but you are as well placed as anyone to do two things
First,contact the people who are responsible for this delightful
software we are using (?Linda Littleton and Bill Verity of Penn
State Centre for Academic Computing) and ask whether in the next
release it would be possible to include an extra more user friendly
message identification tag at the top of the message (along the
lines of the one I suggest, which is immediately recognizable by
readers of the paper literature).
Second,contact an editor of a paper journal and find when they are
holding their next Editors' Convention. Get yourself invited to
address them on agreeing on a suitable format for citing the
electronic media.
Sincerely, Don Forsdyke
