Citation styles of references: a weakness of academic publishing

[摘要] Most people familiar with academicpublishing have, at some point, wonderedwhy there are so many citation styles. Perhapsit makes sense to have some variation instyles. In the humanities or law, writing oftenlends itself to long, explanatory footnote orendnote citations. Meanwhile, the sciencesgenerally prefer author-date citations withinthe text so that the reader may easily see theage of the reference in a rapidly developingfield of study. It should also be noted thatdifferences between these two primarycitation types may have larger implicationsregarding how research is communicated.1,2However, regardless of how much importanceone attributes to the types of citations, it isdifficult to justify the existence of more thana few standard generic styles. Even if wegenerously assume that popular journals withlimited space might need highly abbreviatedreferences, there is still no need for morethan a dozen styles in total.

[学科分类] 工业工程学

[关键词] Citations;academic publishing