In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • Letter to the Editor
  • Stephen K. Donovan (bio)

RE: PHILIPPE C. BAVEYE, ‘A SHORT NOTE ON POINTLESS REFERENCE FORMATTING,’ JSP 44, 3 (APRIL 2013): 283–288

In a recent tirade, Baveye1 has waved arms, calculated that which cannot be calculated (based largely on guessed data) and drawn in support from others that publishers are wrong to have different formats of reference lists in their research journals. Is the world a more evil place because different publishers and journals have different styles? Of course not—this is trivial.

Baveye’s analysis is a little schizophrenic. He observes that ‘several authors have opined that the multitude of reference styles used in scholarly journals is entirely pointless,’2 but that authors show an ‘astonishing indifference’3 to the style of references. This is important—most authors just don’t care and get on with the job at hand, that is, research and publication. The ‘several authors’ are, of course, a selected group to strengthen Baveye’s argument. Yet he has failed to notice that one contributor to the Journal of Scholarly Publishing argued against Friedberg’s letter4 at the time and applauded the diversity of styles of academic journals, reference lists and all. Donovan5 has pointed out the truth of the matter; that the multifarious styles found in research journals—not just in the reference lists, but in page size, font, thickness, language, format, and cover colour and design—are aimed at the reader, not the author. Readers are buyers, authors are sellers, and it is a buyers’ market. Academic journals are a commodity that is sold. Baveye can hold his breath and bang his booties on the side of the cot as much as he likes, but academic publishers are in the business to make money and, at present, this is mainly achieved by selling journals to libraries and individuals. Different journals have different styles and differences in reference list style are just part of the whole, which are formulated to encourage maximum sales. With the change toward authors paying to ensure open [End Page 97] access, the academic may get a bigger say in style and format, but not at present.

But Baveye writes about constructing the reference lists for his research papers as if this were a task separate from everything else involved in the job. Surely the references and the reference list are an integral part of any research. And surely it is not just the style of reference lists that vary from journal to journal. A well-constructed, accurate reference list is an important facet of any academic project. An editor may get an early indication of the worth of a submission by examining the author’s engagement with the style of the journal. Sloppy reference formatting and weak content often go hand in hand in my experience. Small differences in format between journals are not an excuse for the common sloppiness that infects academic submissions.

It is also probable that any individual author will publish her research in only a limited number of journals. Thus, an author will have to deal with a similarly limited range of formats of reference lists. If one or more of those journals is published by a single publishing house, they will probably all follow the same house style of references. This coalescence of styles under one publishing umbrella is a small version of the uniformity that Baveye craves; it is happening, but by evolution, not revolution. As more journals are gathered under the umbrella of any given publisher, so will more journals have similar formats for their reference lists. As one example, I have published in a number of Elsevier journals in recent years and their styles of referencing are consistent. Similarly, serials published by the Geological Society of America have an identical referencing style. I deny that the journals targeted by a single author do have the ‘‘‘staggering profusion’’’6 that Baveye and Friedberg lament.

A typical reference in an academic paper’s reference list includes only a limited amount of data: author(s), year of publication, title of paper, title of journal, volume number and pagination. Different styles still refer to the same data. Moving from...

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