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A Short Note on Pointless Reference Formatting
- Journal of Scholarly Publishing
- University of Toronto Press
- Volume 44, Number 3, April 2013
- pp. 283-288
- Article
- Additional Information
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In the last few years, several authors have opined that the multitude of reference styles used in scholarly journals is entirely pointless. In this brief note, a back-of-the-envelope calculation shows that this profusion of styles leads to significant waste of researchers’ time and financial resources, all of which could be spent on far more meaningful pursuits. A simple solution is for all journals to adopt a single reference format. This could happen relatively easily, it is argued, if major funding agencies decided to back the idea.