Do you read the reference list in academic journals?
January 9, 2023 5:07 PM Subscribe
I have had the dubious pleasure of editing and formatting a biannual international journal for 15 years. The authors are academics, and most have doctorates. Some have English as a first language, but this problem applies to all of them. Out of 30 issues (I can't tell you how many papers, but it's a lot), not once has a paper been delivered to me that didn't require changes.
The worst of it is the reference lists. They are supposed to use APA 6th or 7th:
* Some papers try to be APA, but fail miserably (even though I recommend Reciteworks to them [or referencing software], which is cheap and rather good, nobody seems to use it).
* Some papers are hybrid APA/Harvard/something else.
* Some papers - the reference list and the citations in the text don't match (hugely, 8references missing in the text, 3 ambiguous, 12 missing in reference list sort-of-thing) .
* Some authors insist on using Wikipedia references (despite the reality shown by a post on the blue that I can't find, that journalists reference a Wikipedia page, and that article becomes a reference for the Wiki page) and insists that it's fine because APA has details on how to do it.
* Some references aren't in alphabetical author / year (I mean, how hard is that?)
* Some (and I blame the English-speaking world for this) vary the author reference by using first, second or third name (of non-English-named authors), so the same reference may appear in three different places.
* Some authors think italics are optional.
* Some love unnecessary colons or capitalisation.
* I could go on.
I have information about preparing their paper for the authors in every issue (Notes for Contributors), and the Paper Submission Form has checkboxes to remind them to do spellcheck, reference check and so on, but I don't think they actually stop and think: did I spellcheck? I must have. I have awesome spelling, this question doesn't apply to me.
Questions
Question 1 is answered in an earlier AskMe here.
Question 2: if you read or edit or submit papers to academic journals, do you notice how poorly or how well the reference section in your paper (or other papers in the journal) has been edited?
Question 3: Is it possible that my Journal's field (known as family and consumer sciences in the USA) attracts writers who don't value reference lists?
Question 4: Sometimes the big chief (it's just her and me) says to "not agonise over it", which means don't check the references, just make it look good because it's late.
I'm neurodiverse, and I'm of two (at least) minds here:
a. If you have meagre Google Scholar skills, you can probably find the reference even if it's not been presented correctly, so it doesn't matter.
b. If your authors write like first-year undergrads, and break referencing rules, how can other authors respect the papers and the journal? This is terrible, horrible, no good, very bad.
Bonus Question 5: As well as this Journal, I prepare books for publishers and theses for evaluation. Has anyone found a way to convince contributors to:
* put their own name on their submission title on the files rather than my organisation's name (e.g. Chapter for XYZ University, or Paper4b33j) or change the original file name for photos (e.g., DC4209) instead of renaming it BookTitle-ChNo-Figno?
* that inserting a photo into Word reduces the resolution and dragging a corner just makes the image blurrier without increasing the DPI?
* that increasing the "size" of a photo in Word by pulling on the side or top handles changes the proportions?
* that tables should be submitted as tables, not as images that someone has to retype?
TLDR: are my authors particularly careless, or is the way everywhere? [This is an ongoing [15 year] work stressor for me, so any commentary on reframing my attitude(s) would be welcome.
The worst of it is the reference lists. They are supposed to use APA 6th or 7th:
* Some papers try to be APA, but fail miserably (even though I recommend Reciteworks to them [or referencing software], which is cheap and rather good, nobody seems to use it).
* Some papers are hybrid APA/Harvard/something else.
* Some papers - the reference list and the citations in the text don't match (hugely, 8references missing in the text, 3 ambiguous, 12 missing in reference list sort-of-thing) .
* Some authors insist on using Wikipedia references (despite the reality shown by a post on the blue that I can't find, that journalists reference a Wikipedia page, and that article becomes a reference for the Wiki page) and insists that it's fine because APA has details on how to do it.
* Some references aren't in alphabetical author / year (I mean, how hard is that?)
* Some (and I blame the English-speaking world for this) vary the author reference by using first, second or third name (of non-English-named authors), so the same reference may appear in three different places.
* Some authors think italics are optional.
* Some love unnecessary colons or capitalisation.
* I could go on.
I have information about preparing their paper for the authors in every issue (Notes for Contributors), and the Paper Submission Form has checkboxes to remind them to do spellcheck, reference check and so on, but I don't think they actually stop and think: did I spellcheck? I must have. I have awesome spelling, this question doesn't apply to me.
Questions
Question 1 is answered in an earlier AskMe here.
Question 2: if you read or edit or submit papers to academic journals, do you notice how poorly or how well the reference section in your paper (or other papers in the journal) has been edited?
Question 3: Is it possible that my Journal's field (known as family and consumer sciences in the USA) attracts writers who don't value reference lists?
Question 4: Sometimes the big chief (it's just her and me) says to "not agonise over it", which means don't check the references, just make it look good because it's late.
I'm neurodiverse, and I'm of two (at least) minds here:
a. If you have meagre Google Scholar skills, you can probably find the reference even if it's not been presented correctly, so it doesn't matter.
b. If your authors write like first-year undergrads, and break referencing rules, how can other authors respect the papers and the journal? This is terrible, horrible, no good, very bad.
Bonus Question 5: As well as this Journal, I prepare books for publishers and theses for evaluation. Has anyone found a way to convince contributors to:
* put their own name on their submission title on the files rather than my organisation's name (e.g. Chapter for XYZ University, or Paper4b33j) or change the original file name for photos (e.g., DC4209) instead of renaming it BookTitle-ChNo-Figno?
* that inserting a photo into Word reduces the resolution and dragging a corner just makes the image blurrier without increasing the DPI?
* that increasing the "size" of a photo in Word by pulling on the side or top handles changes the proportions?
* that tables should be submitted as tables, not as images that someone has to retype?
TLDR: are my authors particularly careless, or is the way everywhere? [This is an ongoing [15 year] work stressor for me, so any commentary on reframing my attitude(s) would be welcome.
Best answer: All of this sounds *very* standard for any publication I've worked on. I try to cut authors slack (mentally), as they're doing one job (writing) and I'm doing a very different job (editing, proofreading, and/or designing). No amount of hand-wringing will get them all to do everything to your standards, and that, indeed, is *why* they need an editor. Try to think of it as job security. Yes, you can and should still give them proper specs and directions, and some will follow those to the best of their abilities, but others most certainly will not. As long as you have the time and ability, I recommend doing your best to standardize/edit the references. Create your own standards and stick to those as best you can. Some will slip through, but the majority should be similar. Bonus: future authors may look at the published references and match to those.
It's taken me many years to learn to let go of these frustrations. I recommend that you try to gamify it to avoid getting annoyed. See which author can get the bingo of hitting all of the big no-no's.
Regarding your Bonus Question on filename, it's annoying, and I make a habit of renaming files immediately as I receive them. But think about it from the sender's perspective: to them, they don't want their own name on the file on their hard drive. They're just being selfish, as most humans are wont to do.
Long story short: try to think of yourself as being there to help the authors in the tasks they aren't great at. There's a reason you're the editor of these publications.
posted by hydra77 at 5:38 PM on January 9, 2023 [19 favorites]
It's taken me many years to learn to let go of these frustrations. I recommend that you try to gamify it to avoid getting annoyed. See which author can get the bingo of hitting all of the big no-no's.
Regarding your Bonus Question on filename, it's annoying, and I make a habit of renaming files immediately as I receive them. But think about it from the sender's perspective: to them, they don't want their own name on the file on their hard drive. They're just being selfish, as most humans are wont to do.
Long story short: try to think of yourself as being there to help the authors in the tasks they aren't great at. There's a reason you're the editor of these publications.
posted by hydra77 at 5:38 PM on January 9, 2023 [19 favorites]
Best answer: I used to edit manuscripts for a book publisher. Every time I saw the letters "Ph.D." behind the author's name, I knew I was in for a long slog. Without exception, they either didn't know or care about proper citations, and sometimes proper grammar went out the window, too.
As for Question 4b, the answer is you. People like you clean up the mess, and readers see only that fine work. So long as editors are allowed to correct the diarrhetic flow from people who should know better and care more, the publication's reputation will stand strong. Given that spellcheck increasingly is replacing editors, we'll have to see what effect, if any, follows.
Condolences.
posted by bryon at 5:45 PM on January 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
As for Question 4b, the answer is you. People like you clean up the mess, and readers see only that fine work. So long as editors are allowed to correct the diarrhetic flow from people who should know better and care more, the publication's reputation will stand strong. Given that spellcheck increasingly is replacing editors, we'll have to see what effect, if any, follows.
Condolences.
posted by bryon at 5:45 PM on January 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
Best answer: I have edited an academic journal. It's a thankless job.
To cut to the chase: the things you describe are common - at least in my experience. It boils down to human nature. Some people will simply not read something you prepare for them - in this case submission guidelines. They just won't - and you need to throttle back if you want to keep your sanity.
Specifically in regards to references and citations - the perfect is the enemy of the good. I have spent a good portion of my career sitting at a reference desk in a large academic library, generally helping people with citations - either deciphering them or trying to create them. It's never going to be perfect. I've had more undergraduates in anguish over trying to cite a thing right in front of them but their stupid style manual/citation format won't let it just be done in a simple way. And trying to find things from a reference list - sometimes you figure out the puzzle and read through the errors and you find the thing referred to by the citation. And sometimes you don't.
Finally: the existence of an editor implies the existence of errors and disorder. It's built into the job. Editors exist because to err is human.
posted by niicholas at 5:47 PM on January 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
To cut to the chase: the things you describe are common - at least in my experience. It boils down to human nature. Some people will simply not read something you prepare for them - in this case submission guidelines. They just won't - and you need to throttle back if you want to keep your sanity.
Specifically in regards to references and citations - the perfect is the enemy of the good. I have spent a good portion of my career sitting at a reference desk in a large academic library, generally helping people with citations - either deciphering them or trying to create them. It's never going to be perfect. I've had more undergraduates in anguish over trying to cite a thing right in front of them but their stupid style manual/citation format won't let it just be done in a simple way. And trying to find things from a reference list - sometimes you figure out the puzzle and read through the errors and you find the thing referred to by the citation. And sometimes you don't.
Finally: the existence of an editor implies the existence of errors and disorder. It's built into the job. Editors exist because to err is human.
posted by niicholas at 5:47 PM on January 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
Response by poster: Thank you all. I'm the only person I've met who does this work, and with 20 books on my brag shelf (some over 500 pages long) and 60 issues of the Journal, I have learned so much, but I haven't had anyone to complain with or to check if this is normal or if I'm doing something wrong.
You get a best answer, you get a best answer, Y'ALL GET BEST ANSWER, because they are. I'm going to save the link to this on my desktop and look at it whenever I feel like doing Question 1.
posted by b33j at 6:01 PM on January 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
You get a best answer, you get a best answer, Y'ALL GET BEST ANSWER, because they are. I'm going to save the link to this on my desktop and look at it whenever I feel like doing Question 1.
posted by b33j at 6:01 PM on January 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
Best answer: I'm on the other side of the desk as the previous responders in that I read and write academic papers (medicine).
I absolutely read the references list, both as a reader seeking information and as a peer reviewer.
As a peer reviewer I always check to see that the referenced papers actually say the thing for which they are being referenced - content.
But my reading is for information/content only, not punctuation, spelling, format or anything like that. I only need enough information to find the paper; it's rare that I can't find the referenced paper.
Thank you for the work you do!!
posted by lulu68 at 6:40 PM on January 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
I absolutely read the references list, both as a reader seeking information and as a peer reviewer.
As a peer reviewer I always check to see that the referenced papers actually say the thing for which they are being referenced - content.
But my reading is for information/content only, not punctuation, spelling, format or anything like that. I only need enough information to find the paper; it's rare that I can't find the referenced paper.
Thank you for the work you do!!
posted by lulu68 at 6:40 PM on January 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
Best answer: Like lulu68, I read a metric shit ton of academic papers (social sciences), frequently serve as a peer reviewer, write a few journal papers, and I DO read the references. However, I do not care in the least how they are formatted; I only care that any given reference is NOT a ghost citation.
Also? Thank you SO VERY MUCH for the work that you do. I absolutely could not do it, and I know I couldn't do it; my brain skips right over typos, grammar errors, and all the other characteristics that annoy the hell out of detail-oriented people like you. My apologies.
posted by skye.dancer at 7:13 PM on January 9, 2023 [5 favorites]
Also? Thank you SO VERY MUCH for the work that you do. I absolutely could not do it, and I know I couldn't do it; my brain skips right over typos, grammar errors, and all the other characteristics that annoy the hell out of detail-oriented people like you. My apologies.
posted by skye.dancer at 7:13 PM on January 9, 2023 [5 favorites]
Best answer: Oh hai, I submitted two articles today! Maybe I am someone you want to hear from.
Part of it is that your writers are, or should be, consumed with a different set of details: ones only they or their coauthors can get right, and/or ones that everyone in their field will punish them for getting wrong. From this perspective, the details of journal requirements around title length, abstract format, “graphical abstracts” and the like feel less relevant. Especially when you realize that a) these details are different at every single outlet and b) any given paper you handle is probably, ahem, only serially monogamous. Not many findings get to be high school sweethearts with Nature.
Another part of it is that for references specifically, most of the people I know are relying on technology. I get my references from PubMed or medRxiv and stick em in Zotero and I do not actually check that they imported right — I’m trusting my metadata provider. Probably some of that metadata is bad. Certainly by the time my paper goes to press, some of the metadata is bad because some of the refs will have finished gestating and gone from in-press to having issue and page numbers and so forth. I do count on people like you to mark up my mistakes so I can fix them at that time and I am grateful that you do even though I like the dentist more than I like going through proofs of my own papers.
As a side note, submitting two papers took five hours of work today and I was so brain fried by the experience that I had to go for a walk. I found myself scratching my head about this experience. Like, the part that felt like “the real work” was done months ago, and I even thought both of these papers were in impeccable shape vis a vis the instructions to authors, but somehow struggling with web forms, keyword taxonomies, bad journal metadata about my coauthors and their institutions, etc just took everything I had and a stupid amount of time. I’m perplexed.
posted by eirias at 7:21 PM on January 9, 2023 [7 favorites]
Part of it is that your writers are, or should be, consumed with a different set of details: ones only they or their coauthors can get right, and/or ones that everyone in their field will punish them for getting wrong. From this perspective, the details of journal requirements around title length, abstract format, “graphical abstracts” and the like feel less relevant. Especially when you realize that a) these details are different at every single outlet and b) any given paper you handle is probably, ahem, only serially monogamous. Not many findings get to be high school sweethearts with Nature.
Another part of it is that for references specifically, most of the people I know are relying on technology. I get my references from PubMed or medRxiv and stick em in Zotero and I do not actually check that they imported right — I’m trusting my metadata provider. Probably some of that metadata is bad. Certainly by the time my paper goes to press, some of the metadata is bad because some of the refs will have finished gestating and gone from in-press to having issue and page numbers and so forth. I do count on people like you to mark up my mistakes so I can fix them at that time and I am grateful that you do even though I like the dentist more than I like going through proofs of my own papers.
As a side note, submitting two papers took five hours of work today and I was so brain fried by the experience that I had to go for a walk. I found myself scratching my head about this experience. Like, the part that felt like “the real work” was done months ago, and I even thought both of these papers were in impeccable shape vis a vis the instructions to authors, but somehow struggling with web forms, keyword taxonomies, bad journal metadata about my coauthors and their institutions, etc just took everything I had and a stupid amount of time. I’m perplexed.
posted by eirias at 7:21 PM on January 9, 2023 [7 favorites]
Best answer: I used to make a respectable living as a freelance academic copyeditor and the references were always a disaster when I got my hands on them, for dozens of authors across wildly different fields, institutions, countries, target journals, etc. It's not your authors, it's all of them.
posted by Stacey at 7:25 PM on January 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by Stacey at 7:25 PM on January 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
Response by poster: It's also really helpful to hear the frustrations from the other side, so that I can reduce the amount of useless work authors have to do. Ideally, I'd like papers to come to me in plain text with no helpful formatting. Thank you for that.
posted by b33j at 7:28 PM on January 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by b33j at 7:28 PM on January 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
Best answer: The thing is for most papers I submitted, they’ve already been submitted to a journal and been rejected. Different journals have different formatting guidelines. So reworking the references each time I submit is a pain.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 8:57 PM on January 9, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 8:57 PM on January 9, 2023 [7 favorites]
Best answer: Copyediting is like being an accountant or a home inspector or a piano tuner. It requires training your mind in a way that most people do not find natural or tolerable, and even those of us who can tolerate it are left permanently warped. (I do not say this lightly. Just try to stop noticing other people's comma usage! Just try! You can't do it, and neither can I, because our souls have been deformed.)
Most people aren't warped like us. When they write a bibliography entry, they know what they meant, and that innocent earthly certainty shields them from the deep horrors of typography and punctuation that we, having seen, cannot unsee.
Leave them their innocence.
posted by nebulawindphone at 9:01 PM on January 9, 2023 [5 favorites]
Most people aren't warped like us. When they write a bibliography entry, they know what they meant, and that innocent earthly certainty shields them from the deep horrors of typography and punctuation that we, having seen, cannot unsee.
Leave them their innocence.
posted by nebulawindphone at 9:01 PM on January 9, 2023 [5 favorites]
Best answer: It's also really helpful to hear the frustrations from the other side, so that I can reduce the amount of useless work authors have to do. Ideally, I'd like papers to come to me in plain text with no helpful formatting.
Part of the problem may be that other journals have the opposite preference — either explicitly, as a matter of policy, or implicitly, because their editors and reviewers are more likely to accept a paper that looks "professional" and "polished." So writers put the stuff in because generally they're rewarded for it, and then it's a pain to take it out just for you.
I think another part is that some writers find it easier to work on a paper that's formatted in a familiar way. If you're used to fancy section headings and figure captions and blah blah blah, then staring at a plain page of text can be disorienting. So they put the stuff in because it's useful to them (and why not, since at most venues they're also rewarded for it?) and then it's a pain to take it out just for you.
posted by nebulawindphone at 9:12 PM on January 9, 2023
Part of the problem may be that other journals have the opposite preference — either explicitly, as a matter of policy, or implicitly, because their editors and reviewers are more likely to accept a paper that looks "professional" and "polished." So writers put the stuff in because generally they're rewarded for it, and then it's a pain to take it out just for you.
I think another part is that some writers find it easier to work on a paper that's formatted in a familiar way. If you're used to fancy section headings and figure captions and blah blah blah, then staring at a plain page of text can be disorienting. So they put the stuff in because it's useful to them (and why not, since at most venues they're also rewarded for it?) and then it's a pain to take it out just for you.
posted by nebulawindphone at 9:12 PM on January 9, 2023
Best answer: I also edit other people's submitted articles. It's for a legal news publication, so the issues are different. But citation formatting is one of them!
We actually have quite a few highly specific standards that we ask authors to meet. My boss has been instrumental in developing many of these standards. They have generally raised the quality of our articles, or in some cases at least made them more consistent. But many of them are hard to communicate to authors. And even when we take pains to communicate these, some are almost always ignored and/or misunderstood.
It can be enormously frustrating. Ultimately, I try not to get mad, either at the authors or at my boss (who is generally wonderful, just very exacting sometimes). I now have a series of canned responses I copy and paste into emails, explaining what needs to be fixed in an article. They don't always work -- and if there's a lot to fix, I will generally pick my battles, and just try to get them to fix some of it, then do the rest myself.
I'm not clear on whether you can send articles back and ask for fixes. In my case, I can theoretically send an article back as many times as needed until a problem is addressed. In practice, I've done it as many as 4 or 5 times... but at some point I just get tired of this, and I know the authors do too. In some cases, it wastes less of my time to just fix things myself.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 9:32 PM on January 9, 2023
We actually have quite a few highly specific standards that we ask authors to meet. My boss has been instrumental in developing many of these standards. They have generally raised the quality of our articles, or in some cases at least made them more consistent. But many of them are hard to communicate to authors. And even when we take pains to communicate these, some are almost always ignored and/or misunderstood.
It can be enormously frustrating. Ultimately, I try not to get mad, either at the authors or at my boss (who is generally wonderful, just very exacting sometimes). I now have a series of canned responses I copy and paste into emails, explaining what needs to be fixed in an article. They don't always work -- and if there's a lot to fix, I will generally pick my battles, and just try to get them to fix some of it, then do the rest myself.
I'm not clear on whether you can send articles back and ask for fixes. In my case, I can theoretically send an article back as many times as needed until a problem is addressed. In practice, I've done it as many as 4 or 5 times... but at some point I just get tired of this, and I know the authors do too. In some cases, it wastes less of my time to just fix things myself.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 9:32 PM on January 9, 2023
Response by poster: If I can't solve the issue, I'll send the paper back with a request for information. But mostly, when they get to have a look at the formatted paper with the last chance for changes, I'll tell them what I changed (and why and list a page number from the APA reference book: I have a stack of canned ones in my spreadsheet), and I'll have a list of * Please action highlighted xyz (with canned reasons, APA page number).
But yeah, mostly, it's quicker to do it myself.
I started editing by accident in 1991 when my ex and I received a government grant to start a printing business with the new technology available (hah! a 486DX and a dot matrix printer. I'm still using my tiny Wacom tablet from then), and I couldn't even read the newspaper without mentally marking it up. My version of Kindle offers the opportunity for me to alert the publishers to errors in the e-books I read. That's quite satisfying, even if I don't hear back.
I'm really chuffed at the responses. All excellent and understanding. Feel free to add more (I'll try to avoid thread sitting, but at Paper 10 of 24 of the issue due last month, where I've hit a snag, I thought I'd pop back in for tea and sympathy.) BTW, My occasional RA (my son)thought the AskMe link in Q1 was hilarious, and knew exactly which author I was referring to.
posted by b33j at 10:29 PM on January 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
But yeah, mostly, it's quicker to do it myself.
I started editing by accident in 1991 when my ex and I received a government grant to start a printing business with the new technology available (hah! a 486DX and a dot matrix printer. I'm still using my tiny Wacom tablet from then), and I couldn't even read the newspaper without mentally marking it up. My version of Kindle offers the opportunity for me to alert the publishers to errors in the e-books I read. That's quite satisfying, even if I don't hear back.
I'm really chuffed at the responses. All excellent and understanding. Feel free to add more (I'll try to avoid thread sitting, but at Paper 10 of 24 of the issue due last month, where I've hit a snag, I thought I'd pop back in for tea and sympathy.) BTW, My occasional RA (my son)thought the AskMe link in Q1 was hilarious, and knew exactly which author I was referring to.
posted by b33j at 10:29 PM on January 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
OMG, I clicked on your link in Q1, read the entire thread, laughed and favorited several answers and only when I got to end realized it was from 2004.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 11:49 PM on January 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by TWinbrook8 at 11:49 PM on January 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
Best answer: One of my last gigs was supervising final year undergrad and MSc projects. So I had an opportunity to teach an up-coming generation the virtues of correct referencing. The fundamental point is to enable readers to locate the source of statements / citations. And yes, as you point out, Google Scholar is a good pal for this. But references also provide an insight into the mind and standards of the writer, so I'd read that part of each Project Report first. Non-sense in the refs was a strong predictor for impenetrable writing in the text. Jings, but did they love officialese. Bonus Q5: I had a strong line in The Naming of Files too: as above the principle is to make it easier on the recipient as a courtesy. You can get a lot past a reviewer if you haven't annoyed them from the get-go with rogue commas or spelinge errurs.
posted by BobTheScientist at 12:06 AM on January 10, 2023
posted by BobTheScientist at 12:06 AM on January 10, 2023
Best answer: I'm a scientist who writes a lot of papers. References are important and yes I read them! They often do have mistakes - the biggest cause of this is (as noted above) that most authors use a referencing software like Endnote, Zotero, etc. Often the software does not import references correctly and either the author does not notice, or if they do, it's a pain to fix. I usually end up converting my references to plain text and fixing them manually prior to submission but if you need to change or reorder references later it's a big pain. Also, most manuscripts get submitted to more that one journal and it's a pain to reformat every time. Some journals allow any format for initial submission and that is a blessing. Lastly, authors typically pay a fair amount (can be thousands in USD) in publication fees. If I'm paying that much do I expect the journal to copyedit my manuscript? Yes. Do I appreciate that service? Also yes. Lastly, another area where mistakes are common is in figure legends. I always check these carefully in my own manuscripts and when I'm conducting peer review. A typo is a reference is annoying but usually not a big deal, but a mistake in a figure legend can make the data impossible to interpret.
posted by emd3737 at 1:18 AM on January 10, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by emd3737 at 1:18 AM on January 10, 2023 [4 favorites]
Best answer: Addressing question 2 as a Wikipedia editor who reads academic papers so that I can cite them on Wikipedia: Yes, I absolutely need papers to not cite Wikipedia, except for rare appropriate cases (like a paper about Wikipedia), because citogenesis compromises the integrity of Wikipedia. We have a page about this: "you probably shouldn't be citing Wikipedia". If a paper I'm reading cites something to Wikipedia that should be cited to something else, I probably can't/won't use the paper. Thank you for helping prevent that!
posted by dreamyshade at 6:00 AM on January 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by dreamyshade at 6:00 AM on January 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
Best answer: I am also an editor of an academic journal. Our publisher (T&F) checks the references, including reference format. All I do is put in comments "please correct to Chicago style." Are you certain your publisher doesn't do this?
Also, I've never gotten a perfect paper either. A paper is a complicated beast - there's usually something wrong. That's my job security!
posted by Miko at 7:42 AM on January 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
Also, I've never gotten a perfect paper either. A paper is a complicated beast - there's usually something wrong. That's my job security!
posted by Miko at 7:42 AM on January 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
Best answer: I teach doctoral students and also review papers for several journals and conferences. I've seen lots of what you describe. I think several things are going on, including some that people have mentioned.
*APA is one of many styles, and invariably, people mix-and-match, especially when importing references from other documents.
*The proliferation of online resources makes any kind of citation more complicated. APA, for all its pros, can be a little confusing, especially in places where authorship is tricky to discern.
*My sense is that many academics take a consequentialist approach to citation--for them, the goal is to make sure readers can track down the original resource, and doing this doesn't always require precision or perfect compliance with style rules. It's a "good enough" attitude. For your purposes, obviously, that's not good enough.
posted by yellowcandy at 10:42 AM on January 10, 2023
*APA is one of many styles, and invariably, people mix-and-match, especially when importing references from other documents.
*The proliferation of online resources makes any kind of citation more complicated. APA, for all its pros, can be a little confusing, especially in places where authorship is tricky to discern.
*My sense is that many academics take a consequentialist approach to citation--for them, the goal is to make sure readers can track down the original resource, and doing this doesn't always require precision or perfect compliance with style rules. It's a "good enough" attitude. For your purposes, obviously, that's not good enough.
posted by yellowcandy at 10:42 AM on January 10, 2023
Best answer: I am a librarian who helps students with citations sometimes; I am a peer reviewer for a couple of academic journals; I have written and published peer reviewed academic journal articles; I read the entire big MLA guide in grad school and took pride in having citations as perfect as possible.
Citation styles are such a racket. There are four or five major style guides (MLA, APA, Chicago/Turabian, AP, what else?), and then tons of journals have their own specific thing, and all of these guides have new editions and versions come out every few years (which edition APA, and so on ).
It's totally exhausting. Students have to spend far too much time figuring out the details of citation style guides.
And relying on Zotero or Endnote or Google Scholar or your other database doesn't work because the metadata usually isn't perfect, and these things don't always know to translate. So you end up with MLA citations with the author's initials, or without proper capitalization, and you have to edit by hand if you want them properly cited. And then students sometimes get dinged for these errors more than whether they had a decent argument and essay structure.
Taking a big step back, the list of references exists so you can show your work, so to speak, so that readers can find the evidence you have shared. The list of references needs to be presented in a way such that the reader can track down the source. That's the point. Sometimes, like for websites, we include an access date because know some information changes. Sometimes we include when we read something that was republished, in case we need to reconcile different sources.
The ultimate goal should be to make it as simple as possible for the author to share information about a source and the reader to be able to locate that source. Consistency helps with this. The multitude of style guides does not.
That's not your responsibility, but it might help to understand what writers and researchers are dealing with in this space.
posted by bluedaisy at 1:23 PM on January 10, 2023 [6 favorites]
Citation styles are such a racket. There are four or five major style guides (MLA, APA, Chicago/Turabian, AP, what else?), and then tons of journals have their own specific thing, and all of these guides have new editions and versions come out every few years (which edition APA, and so on ).
It's totally exhausting. Students have to spend far too much time figuring out the details of citation style guides.
And relying on Zotero or Endnote or Google Scholar or your other database doesn't work because the metadata usually isn't perfect, and these things don't always know to translate. So you end up with MLA citations with the author's initials, or without proper capitalization, and you have to edit by hand if you want them properly cited. And then students sometimes get dinged for these errors more than whether they had a decent argument and essay structure.
Taking a big step back, the list of references exists so you can show your work, so to speak, so that readers can find the evidence you have shared. The list of references needs to be presented in a way such that the reader can track down the source. That's the point. Sometimes, like for websites, we include an access date because know some information changes. Sometimes we include when we read something that was republished, in case we need to reconcile different sources.
The ultimate goal should be to make it as simple as possible for the author to share information about a source and the reader to be able to locate that source. Consistency helps with this. The multitude of style guides does not.
That's not your responsibility, but it might help to understand what writers and researchers are dealing with in this space.
posted by bluedaisy at 1:23 PM on January 10, 2023 [6 favorites]
Best answer: I work in academia writing and submitting manuscripts and a few things to keep in mind for having some empathy for the other side of the desk.
1) I am often extremely overworked with precarious employment and writing papers is just like the frosting on the cake of most of my workload, not the main thing I do. This means that I really truly have limited time/capacity to do the research, write the manuscript, manage co-authors, find suitable journals, submit, wrangle with our finance folks to handle publication fees and invoices and the I’m usually also expected to manage dissemination of the publication. Writing and submitting manuscripts is generously 10% of my total workload.
2) Every journal has different submission systems and requirements and it is a huge time suck trying to figure them all out. Every. Single. Time. You submit a manuscript.
3) Many academic journals require researchers to pay publication fees that go into thousands of dollars. If I pay a journal $3,000 to publish my paper you better believe I expect the nitty gritty copy editing to be done on their end.
4) Are the publication requirements really and truly clear and easy to read and formatted in a helpful way like a checklist? So often submission requirements are like reading legalese that I get exhausted just trying to figure out what specific requirements they want.
5) It sounds like your job really focused on one thing. For me formatting an image differently for every single manuscript is just one more block on the Jenga tower of teaching, emails, payroll issues, website migration, proposal writing, analysis plans, guest posts, peer reviewing, and supervising I deal with every day. I do the best I can but I really just don’t have time or bandwidth to spend a whole half day fiddling with these kinds of details.
posted by forkisbetter at 3:24 PM on January 10, 2023 [5 favorites]
1) I am often extremely overworked with precarious employment and writing papers is just like the frosting on the cake of most of my workload, not the main thing I do. This means that I really truly have limited time/capacity to do the research, write the manuscript, manage co-authors, find suitable journals, submit, wrangle with our finance folks to handle publication fees and invoices and the I’m usually also expected to manage dissemination of the publication. Writing and submitting manuscripts is generously 10% of my total workload.
2) Every journal has different submission systems and requirements and it is a huge time suck trying to figure them all out. Every. Single. Time. You submit a manuscript.
3) Many academic journals require researchers to pay publication fees that go into thousands of dollars. If I pay a journal $3,000 to publish my paper you better believe I expect the nitty gritty copy editing to be done on their end.
4) Are the publication requirements really and truly clear and easy to read and formatted in a helpful way like a checklist? So often submission requirements are like reading legalese that I get exhausted just trying to figure out what specific requirements they want.
5) It sounds like your job really focused on one thing. For me formatting an image differently for every single manuscript is just one more block on the Jenga tower of teaching, emails, payroll issues, website migration, proposal writing, analysis plans, guest posts, peer reviewing, and supervising I deal with every day. I do the best I can but I really just don’t have time or bandwidth to spend a whole half day fiddling with these kinds of details.
posted by forkisbetter at 3:24 PM on January 10, 2023 [5 favorites]
Best answer: It's not just your segment of the universe.
I've worked with PhD types on white papers. If they know the citation style, it's most likely the one they used in their dissertation. And there's a good chance this knowledge is an edition or two out of date.
I suppose it's possible that folks who run their work through grammarly create work that is less frustrating for the copy editor. (But grammarly is its own version of Hades for editors.)
I do have a working theory that this low attention to detail (in this specific instance) may be an adaptive trait (at least to some degree) in PhD land. Every moment spent on formatting is a moment not spent on getting stuff done. Folks who can't turn off that editor will struggle completing their dissertation let alone survive in the "publish or perish" environment of the ivory tower.
I also think that people in general are bad at following instructions.
posted by oceano at 5:17 PM on January 10, 2023
I've worked with PhD types on white papers. If they know the citation style, it's most likely the one they used in their dissertation. And there's a good chance this knowledge is an edition or two out of date.
I suppose it's possible that folks who run their work through grammarly create work that is less frustrating for the copy editor. (But grammarly is its own version of Hades for editors.)
I do have a working theory that this low attention to detail (in this specific instance) may be an adaptive trait (at least to some degree) in PhD land. Every moment spent on formatting is a moment not spent on getting stuff done. Folks who can't turn off that editor will struggle completing their dissertation let alone survive in the "publish or perish" environment of the ivory tower.
I also think that people in general are bad at following instructions.
posted by oceano at 5:17 PM on January 10, 2023
Response by poster: Miko, The Organisation that sponsors this journal is the '"publisher". We have The Editor (who is my boss), who sets the peer-review process in motion by sending the blind paper to the most appropriate Editorial Board member, who forwards it to two academics with a form with the criteria for evaluating the paper. They send the evaluated paper back to the Editorial Board Member who collates the two opinions on a separate form and makes a recommendation. The Editor receives the recommendation and evaluations, decides if the paper is good enough and sends it to me. I format (and lightly edit) it to print standard^, give the authors one last chance to make changes, and then it is uploaded to the Organisation's website as individual PDFs and sent to Informit. I would love to delegate the referencing, but it's just me (mostly).
I developed a manuscript submission form after looking at over a dozen downloaded from the net and tried to make it as comprehensive as possible, but I think in aiming to change author behaviour with checklists and so on , I just made every worse. I'll revamp it for this year.
Thanks everyone, for all your input. I'm pleased that another Mefite was introduced to the 2004 question. This whole thread has been an eye-opener, and all the contributions are very much appreciated.
When I was an undergraduate, I thought I knew how to reference, but it wasn't until I started working on The Journal that I discovered how little I knew, so I really shouldn't criticise the authors. Luckily my neurodiversity (mostly) makes me feel like this part of my job is long-play Tetris typography (or Jenga, thank you, hydra77 & forkisbetter ) and I have found some great shortcuts (like finding all the acronyms with Find and Replace) that make me look fast. I would like to acknowledge everyone by name, but I've just clued into the fact that I'm avoiding work.
^I once prepared an academic book for Unnamed Academic Publisher where my Word or PDF version was the document used to print the book, no editing from the publisher!!!
WARNING: BORING PROCESS FOLLOWS.
My process includes (not necessarily in this order)
* start with highlighting author formatting (bold, italics) then (new version) making the paper all plain text which fixes errors caused by hidden word processing coding and embedded referencing software, then compare the highlighted version with my plain text version in my template and add back in the authors' original italics
* format the accepted paper in the style we developed in collaboration with The Organisation
* check for egregious errors in writing style (but I've learned to avoid major edits because nobody likes a mysterious editor cutting up their "baby" - the emails I get!)
* do the APA changes like:
** Hyphens, em and en dashes
** Numbers under ten spelled out unless other rules apply
** Correct spacing and italics for mathematical and statistical symbols (=, SD, N, n, %)
** Consistent use of quotation marks
** Quotes over 40 words indented
** Et al. with period and not italicised
** Numbers in tables decimal aligned
** Consistent captions, sourcing, referenced in prior text
** Consistent use of italics based on APA 6th Ed style guide (title, key term first usage, linguistic example, not for emphasis)
** Spell and grammar check, including compound words
**style sheet of repeat terms, so the same term is spelled the same way throughout.
** Appropriate URLs with hyperlinks with underline removed, or link removed if it is inaccessible (like when someone use a staff log-in to find a paper through their institution's library)
**Correct referencing / citations using APA 7th edition
**fixing and formatting tables
**redrawing diagrams / graphs if they are too cluttered or mucky to be understood
and probably some other stuff.
posted by b33j at 8:19 PM on January 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
I developed a manuscript submission form after looking at over a dozen downloaded from the net and tried to make it as comprehensive as possible, but I think in aiming to change author behaviour with checklists and so on , I just made every worse. I'll revamp it for this year.
Thanks everyone, for all your input. I'm pleased that another Mefite was introduced to the 2004 question. This whole thread has been an eye-opener, and all the contributions are very much appreciated.
When I was an undergraduate, I thought I knew how to reference, but it wasn't until I started working on The Journal that I discovered how little I knew, so I really shouldn't criticise the authors. Luckily my neurodiversity (mostly) makes me feel like this part of my job is long-play Tetris typography (or Jenga, thank you, hydra77 & forkisbetter ) and I have found some great shortcuts (like finding all the acronyms with Find and Replace) that make me look fast. I would like to acknowledge everyone by name, but I've just clued into the fact that I'm avoiding work.
^I once prepared an academic book for Unnamed Academic Publisher where my Word or PDF version was the document used to print the book, no editing from the publisher!!!
WARNING: BORING PROCESS FOLLOWS.
My process includes (not necessarily in this order)
* start with highlighting author formatting (bold, italics) then (new version) making the paper all plain text which fixes errors caused by hidden word processing coding and embedded referencing software, then compare the highlighted version with my plain text version in my template and add back in the authors' original italics
* format the accepted paper in the style we developed in collaboration with The Organisation
* check for egregious errors in writing style (but I've learned to avoid major edits because nobody likes a mysterious editor cutting up their "baby" - the emails I get!)
* do the APA changes like:
** Hyphens, em and en dashes
** Numbers under ten spelled out unless other rules apply
** Correct spacing and italics for mathematical and statistical symbols (=, SD, N, n, %)
** Consistent use of quotation marks
** Quotes over 40 words indented
** Et al. with period and not italicised
** Numbers in tables decimal aligned
** Consistent captions, sourcing, referenced in prior text
** Consistent use of italics based on APA 6th Ed style guide (title, key term first usage, linguistic example, not for emphasis)
** Spell and grammar check, including compound words
**style sheet of repeat terms, so the same term is spelled the same way throughout.
** Appropriate URLs with hyperlinks with underline removed, or link removed if it is inaccessible (like when someone use a staff log-in to find a paper through their institution's library)
**Correct referencing / citations using APA 7th edition
**fixing and formatting tables
**redrawing diagrams / graphs if they are too cluttered or mucky to be understood
and probably some other stuff.
posted by b33j at 8:19 PM on January 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
Redrawing graphs? MY BABY! (Ahem) Thanks for this look under the hood, it was informative for me too.
posted by eirias at 3:54 AM on January 11, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by eirias at 3:54 AM on January 11, 2023 [2 favorites]
How standard are your standards? When I was in university the uni in general followed APA, and they published a style guide for students that basically followed the same APA format you'd find if you looked up APA reference styles online. However, my faculty had their own idiosyncratic take on APA that they never shared anywhere and the only reason I knew what it was was because I would get marks off my papers for references that were correct by general/university APA standards, but had the full stop in a different place with the bracket than the faculty would have liked (or something inane like that) but never communicated to anyone. It was highly annoying and I've reckoned that "referencing styles" are a scam ever since.
Also: do you get papers from different countries? I did a course on teaching academic writing for my Master's and one thing we learnt was about differing academic discourses not just across disciplines but also between countries. This extended to expectations around citations - some places weren't as fastidious in expecting "common knowledge" to be referenced compared to other places, for example. But again these differences aren't necessarily communicated or taught, so you end up with a lot of international students being accused of being "bad at academic writing" when really they're just used to different standards back home and no one's clued them into the difference, they just expect the international students to know by osmosis.
posted by creatrixtiara at 8:49 PM on January 11, 2023
Also: do you get papers from different countries? I did a course on teaching academic writing for my Master's and one thing we learnt was about differing academic discourses not just across disciplines but also between countries. This extended to expectations around citations - some places weren't as fastidious in expecting "common knowledge" to be referenced compared to other places, for example. But again these differences aren't necessarily communicated or taught, so you end up with a lot of international students being accused of being "bad at academic writing" when really they're just used to different standards back home and no one's clued them into the difference, they just expect the international students to know by osmosis.
posted by creatrixtiara at 8:49 PM on January 11, 2023
Whew, yes, your journal is doing a lot in-house. That's very different from my experience. This used to be how our journal operated but about 15 years ago we started publishing under contract to the major publishing house; the benefit of that is that not only do they pay us for the content, they handle the finesse of formatting and reference checking, which frees me and my co-editor up to be actual editors. We process peer review comments, do line editing and suggest restructuring, and generally coach the author until we have a good manuscript. In other words, our expectation is that we do work with their "babies" and the editing process does result in structural changes for clarity and strength of argument. We submit it in a basic format that's as close as we can get it to Chicago, but copyediting and typesetting etc. is done by the publisher.
All I could offer is that the reference cleanup is something you could delegate to an hourly/casual staff member, if you wished.
posted by Miko at 6:14 AM on January 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
All I could offer is that the reference cleanup is something you could delegate to an hourly/casual staff member, if you wished.
posted by Miko at 6:14 AM on January 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
I am also somebody who writes and reads academic journal articles. Like others have said, one of the major issues is a) the sheer volume of different styles out there and b) the ways different journals vary in their application of said styles. For example, I am currently working on a submission for a journal that specifies a style, but helpfully, the version from TWO versions ago. But of course all the available resources are from the current version and I have no idea how the older version compares.
I am actually somebody who does try to follow all the rules and submit things in the right format, but it is really a pain in the butt sometimes. I had no idea lots of other authors were ignoring the rules!
posted by DiscourseMarker at 9:24 AM on January 12, 2023
I am actually somebody who does try to follow all the rules and submit things in the right format, but it is really a pain in the butt sometimes. I had no idea lots of other authors were ignoring the rules!
posted by DiscourseMarker at 9:24 AM on January 12, 2023
Question 2: if you read or edit or submit papers to academic journals, do you notice how poorly or how well the reference section in your paper (or other papers in the journal) has been edited?
I absolutely do, and if it's any consolation at all, I tend to be more likely to submit to journals where things are edited well and carefully (this point perhaps also speaks to your 4th question). Like DiscourseMarker, I am a person who actually does put in the effort to format things as requested, and it is a pain in the butt, but I find myself less annoyed about that when I feel like the people at the journal are also putting in the effort. It's also true that in my experience, journals that have in-house editing done by actual academics do a much better job than those where it is done by the publisher (I've had T&F copyeditors screw up their own citation styles in truly bizarre ways).
Question 3: Is it possible that my Journal's field (known as family and consumer sciences in the USA) attracts writers who don't value reference lists?
Anecdotally, my most frustrating copyediting experience was the one time I published in an interdisciplinary journal that was primarily aimed toward the social sciences (I work in the humanities). So perhaps? But perhaps everyone is just overworked and letting this slide/relying on you to do the work.
Such an interesting question!
posted by dizziest at 7:41 AM on January 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
I absolutely do, and if it's any consolation at all, I tend to be more likely to submit to journals where things are edited well and carefully (this point perhaps also speaks to your 4th question). Like DiscourseMarker, I am a person who actually does put in the effort to format things as requested, and it is a pain in the butt, but I find myself less annoyed about that when I feel like the people at the journal are also putting in the effort. It's also true that in my experience, journals that have in-house editing done by actual academics do a much better job than those where it is done by the publisher (I've had T&F copyeditors screw up their own citation styles in truly bizarre ways).
Question 3: Is it possible that my Journal's field (known as family and consumer sciences in the USA) attracts writers who don't value reference lists?
Anecdotally, my most frustrating copyediting experience was the one time I published in an interdisciplinary journal that was primarily aimed toward the social sciences (I work in the humanities). So perhaps? But perhaps everyone is just overworked and letting this slide/relying on you to do the work.
Such an interesting question!
posted by dizziest at 7:41 AM on January 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 5:14 PM on January 9, 2023 [4 favorites]