Scientific references – a Babylonian confusion
By Jan Tunér
Every scientific paper has references to other scientific papers. This is common knowledge and the tradition is completely uncontroversial. In a previous LaserAnnals article (References – science or decorations?) the quality and usefulness of references in many papers has been questioned. This has to do with scientific rigor. But there is another problem with these references, creating a Babylonian confusion for authors. It seems each publishing house picks its own system. The nightmare appears when a journal rejects a submission and the author submits it to a different journal. A different system, all the references have to be re-edited. A waste of time.
English has won the language battle when it comes to scientific publishing. Some may not like this choice but at least it gives us a common language, just as Latin offered to scholars in the past. So why can’t we agree upon a common system for the scientific references?
It starts even in the text preceding the list of references. Some journal want a continuous list of references marked with a superscript figure, pretty straightforward. Example:
Andersson^5 reports that….
Other journals require:
LLLT has a systemic effect (Andersson et al. 2005)
I can live with that, but then some journals want the references listed as they are quoted in the text. Others require the references in alphabetical order, based upon the family name of the first author.
Some journals require all the names of the authors regardless of number. Other journals want only the first three authors or possibly four, followed by “et al.” (= and coworkers). In my opinion this hides useful information, especially since the professor behind a PhD work is usually the last name. And the way names are supposed to be listed differs from John Andersson to Andersson J and Andersson, John.
Does it matter? Yes, I find different number of papers on PubMed if I try the three possibilities above.
Now we have come to the real nightmare. Below, I give you examples of styles. But before that, I must mention the one that I dislike most. Some journals do not publish the title of the paper, only the name of the authors and the journal details. What was the theme of the study? More favorite style is as follows:
Andersson JS, Pettersson MK, Nilsson PA. How to present scientific references. Lasers in Common Sense. 2015,2(8):145-148.
So, here we have the authors, name of the article, journal, year, issue, volume and pages. And for very common family names like Andersson, two first name initials are used to avoid confusion. But why make it simple? Here are variations:
John Andersson, Mike Pettersson, Paul Nilsson. How to present scientific references. Lasers in Common Sense. 2015,2(8):145-148. (Full names)
John Andersson, Mike Pettersson, Paul Nilsson. (2015) How to present scientific references. Lasers in Common Sense. 2(8):145-148.
Andersson, J., Pettersson, M., and Nilsson, P. How to present scientific references. Lasers in Common Sense. 2015,2(8):145-148. (New dots and commas to struggle with)
Andersson, J., Pettersson, M. and Nilsson, P. How to present scientific references. Lasers in Common Sense. 2015,(8):145-148. (Only volume, not issue)
Andersson, J., Pettersson, M. and Nilsson, P. How to present scientific references. Lasers in Common Sense. 2015,(8):145-148.(Name of journal in italics)
Andersson J, Pettersson M, Nilsson P. How to present scientific references. Las Com Sense. 2015,2(8):145-148. (Journal name abbreviated)
Andersson J, Pettersson M, Nilsson P. How to present scientific references. Lasers in Common Sense. 2015,2(8):145-8. (Pagination abbreviated)
These are a few examples, and I can assure you that the variables above can be and are combined in other ways. My call is for simplicity. English is not better for scientific papers than Urdu or Cantonese. But history chose this language as a standard. One language makes international scientific understanding easier. So why make the references so complicated?