Dear Graham,

thanks for the details about the new edition of Cite them right, it  
seems that there is a convergence of minds about simplifying the  
referencing process. I have also made the author Alec Gill aware of  
the fact that his article was disseminated to this list. This is what  
he said in reply (see post below). If anyone can help with the query  
about the British Standards best to post a comment on his blog (The  
full list of comments about his article is available at: http://academicreflexions.blogspot.com/2009/06/20th-april-2009-academic-referencing.html#comments) 
. NB the second post might also be of interest to this list as it  
points to a relevant project and makes the point that this is a debate  
that needs to occur at an international level.

Best

Susie


Dear Susie,
Thank you very much for your support and views. The article in the  
Times HE Online is certainly generating lots of response. Thank you  
also for posting it to the JISC website. I am not sure what that will  
involve - so I will wait and see, The more it gets around the better.  
I have been advised to notify the British Standards people in London,  
but I do not have a direct contact there. Can anyone help in this  
regard? Does anyone know any people and their email I can use to  
contact them directly?
Cheers Alec Gill.

29 June, 2009 13:39Neil Jacobs said...
Thanks for raising this Alec, and thanks to Susie for posting to the  
JISC website. Two comments:
(i) we're scoping international work for repositories to be able to  
share citation information, see:
http://repinf.pbworks.com/Citation-Services-draft-project-proposal
Comments on that are more than welcome. It includes a major two-year  
activity to use text-mining and other approaches to decode the myriad  
referencing styles, which certainly illustrates the scale of the  
problem of making these links work in a digital age.


(ii) I guess I'd like to echo James' point above, the issue is  
probably less what style do we agree on, but who is the "we" and how  
do we get to agreement? With reference to your reply to Susie, I doubt  
a purely British approach will be adequate, this needs international  
action, probably working with editors and publishers?


Best wishes
Neil Jacobs, JISC




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