Bibliographies
While discussing the paper I’m working on, John Baez (from The n-Category Café) and I ended up discussing the use of web-based references in academics. He said
I cite online stuff all the time, and include hyperlinks in my papers. Of course stable locations like the arXiv are best… but we can’t continue pretending the web doesn’t exist.
[This is] one of my minor crusades: gettting academics to take the web seriously.
I do see a bit of a point to the traditionalist view. Stability is not just a benefit, it’s half the point of academic papers. Journal references are one stand-in mathematics has to replace repeatable experimental results. I’m a little edgy citing anything that a reader can’t follow chase down (as I’ve had to a couple times) for precisely this reason.
The arXiv is valid because the mathematical community as a whole has decided to trust that it will be there in as much perpetuity as print journals will be. I don’t think the community believes your site will be maintained for quite that long a time. In effect, there’s some unspoken idea of how “solid” or “verifiable” a reference is, and the level of publication dictates a minimum level of solidity. I can write a weblog post based solely on conversations with colleagues, but I can’t have a bibliography entry reading, “John Baez believes it and that’s good enough for me.”
The other side is giving credit where it’s due. See, I come up with at least half the stuff I do on my own, but I’m not the first person to do some parts of it. In particular here, I know I’ve seen John cover the fact that spans of finite sets decategorify to matrices of natural numbers. But he doesn’t know who did it first either. And so it slips into the cultural background and nobody gets the proper credit.
On the one hand, some day some referee will come screaming that I need to cite this or that, or be jealous that I didn’t mention his (or his student’s) tangentially related work. I really don’t mind putting in such references, but I’m really horrible at knowing what to cite. On the other hand, what happens if something I think I’m breaking new ground on — like the use of spans to extend classical invariants, or the “covariant” definition in this paper — slips into the mists like that? People use it and like it, but nobody points to me. I’m really not jealous in the long run about my work, but I’m sort of at a vulnerable stage in my career here, and I need to play the game a little cutthroat.
So what does this have to do with the web? Stability comes back to the forefront. A stable reference includes reassurances that the credit that was given today will still be given tomorrow. A generic weblog might ascribe a result to Stroppel today, but edit it to Sussan tomorrow, and which can I believe? I might trust the author of the weblog, but how does a referee know to trust my trust? In a way, it ties back into the notion of “Common Knowledge” that’s been burning up Terry Tao’s weblog for a while now.
The web makes a great place to disseminate information, but it’s just too unstable from a common knowledge viewpoint to refer to most of it in a bibliography.
How is editing a blog post to change the credit for some result different than updating an arxiv paper changing the credit for some result? The arxiv makes available the old version history, but there’s no reason in principle that couldn’t be done on blogs too. In both cases, I think you need to go back to the original sources to determine where the credit really belongs.
I think you’re missing the point. I’m talking about citing web-based sources themselves in a bibliography.
You seem to be advocating digging back to a journal paper (or the authors themselves?), which is the status quo. The proposal on the table is to regard citations of web sources as sufficient. I’m stating my misgivings on that proposal. Besides, it’s not always possible to dig back further than a weblog post because the author doesn’t always make an explicit citation in the first place.
And yes, the old version history that the arXiv provides is part and parcel of why it’s taken as stable in the community.
There is no nice way around this.
Your best bet is to cite the person and give the www address with date; to some extent is not this like finding a very rare [single copy] book and citing that.
If you feel your work is important and it depends on some work from the net then you should get permission to download the important sections and make it available on your site.
‘Sufficient’ is not the word I would use. I’d use the word ‘necessary’. Necessary, but not sufficient!
It’s very important to cite stable references to peer-reviewed research whenever possible. It’s very important to put in the time to dig back through the literature and cite the people who first came up with ideas. But it’s also important to cite work that influenced ones thinking, regardless of where it appears — on the arXiv, on blogs, even ‘personal communication’. All these references are useful — both for people trying to understand the ideas, and for people trying to trace the development of the ideas.
Of course, it’s also just good manners to credit people who originate and transmit ideas! If we don’t credit people who explain ideas on blogs, for example, there’s really little reward - academically speaking - for explaining ideas on blogs. Academics live by people crediting them for their work.
(I can imagine putting too many references in a paper, but most people do too little, so that’s not a problem I’m worried about.)
So, I’m not suggesting that we cite online sources instead of journals and books, or that we no longer need to track ideas to their sources. I’m saying we should cite online sources as well.
That’s a good point, John. I’m just nervous about citing something that may not be there tomorrow (if I can even remember a particular web source), and about being taken seriously by people in a position to affect my career. I’m brinksman enough with my choice of fields.
In fact, this isn’t the first time someone seems to have interpreted my call to take the online literature seriously as a call to slack off on the traditional business of digging back to original sources and citing refereed publications. So, let me be clear: I’m advocating doing everything we always should have, and more.