 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Bob Arney
Date: 2003-01-01 01:32
As we have seen many "students" and others have requested help with research projects from members. Assuming I did my own research and used materials gathered from members postings and the resultant "threads", what would be the proper atributive citation in a bibliography? Is "Sneezy" or, now, "Woodwind.Org" a "publication" in the strict sense of the term?? [I disclaim any research tendencies--just curious]
Bob A
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Author: Hank
Date: 2003-01-01 02:18
Hi Bob,
Interesting point. The issues with using any citation source is whether the reference are retrieval as well as credible. Let me cite the Publications Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA) 5th edition which is an accepted reference and style manual in most of the social sciences (the Chicago Manual of Style as well as many other academic manual will have similar rules of usage).
The citation of books, journals, magazines, and any other published material is outlined on pages 207-281. The specific citation for electronic references begins on page 268 and provides clear instructions on how to document a source like this bulletin board on page 278. However, there is a key point on page 277 which states “Care should be taken when citing electronic discussion sources – as a rule, these are not referenced in formal publications because they are generally not peer reviewed, are not regarded as having scholarly content, and are not archived for a significant length of time.”
As a professor, I would not look with favor at a paper with more than scattered references of this nature. If authors have only this type of reference in a paper as opposed to more traditional sources, they either should have picked a better topic to begin with or not “picked the low hanging fruit.”
Regards,
Hank
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Author: Ken Shaw
Date: 2003-01-01 13:43
Bob -
I don my lawyer's hat.
Almost all legal opinions are now published online, as are essential business reports, such as those filed with the SEC. Thus, lawyers have a full set of rules, published in the current edition of A Uniform System of Citation, for citing online sources. In fact, a few judges now insist on having them for all cited cases in court papers.
Hat now off.
I wouldn't recommend anyone but a lawyer to use the USC (which even lawyers find arcane), but at this point every scholarly organization has a citation style for online material. If you're doing scholarly work, you can't afford not to use the styles created by the American Musicological Society or the Modern Language Association.
Hank -
I, too, would be careful about online citations, but there's essential material easily available on the web. I cite a fair amount of online material in my postings, but I'm careful to evaluate it and match the level of the material with the audience I'm writing for.
As a lawyer, I'm very careful to cite only official sources, but there's latitude even there -- for example, an online cite from the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal would be OK for essential news or stock market quotes. If I were writing a paper on Joyce's Ulysses, there's a great online scholarly source I wouldn't hesitate to use for text quotes.
There's lots of garbage out there, particularly on subjects such has health, where wishful thinking and thinly disguised advertising is as common as information. If someone quoted online material on health, I'd disbelieve almost anything that didn't come from the FDA or the Mayo Clinic.
This board is different. Everyone has experience actually playing clarinet, and while there are many questions that aren't well thought out, almost nobody is malicious. Experience and opinion is the whole point
I know you don't wear your professor's hat here, but I'd bet that the average undergraduate term paper you get is pretty much disorganized material copied from a few books. You evaluate online material the same way you do everything else -- how well is it checked for reliability, and how well is it used as the bsis for the student's insight. The proper use of research is as a sober man uses a street light -- for illumination, not support.
Best regards.
Ken Shaw
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Author: Hank
Date: 2003-01-01 14:02
Hi Ken,
You make excellent points about the need to include electronic sources as part of your reference list. There are many well respected sources on-line that are worthy of academic notice and APA covers the manner in which each is cited.
The caution though is the criteria for academic rigor is not always present in newsgroups, discussion groups, or formums. I agree that members here have a common interest, the clarinet but the level of expertise or sophistication is not alway uniform so placing a good deal of credibility on the source requires restraint.
Alas, I do get term papers that are pretty much disorganized material copied from a few books; those are the Cs and Ds. Since I usually grade well over 300 papers and projects each term, it has become pretty easy to separate "those who were naughty from those that were nice."
Regards,
Hank
PS Nice to have a good academic discussion now and then; makes me miss many former colleagues and committees.
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Author: Don Berger
Date: 2003-01-01 14:15
Hank/Ken - Excellent, well-thought-out discussion, many good and useful points. I've done much library/patent research in my career also, for citation inclusion and legal use, and agree with your retrievability and "peer-reviewed" publication requirements for future reference and student-training. To me, its an integral part of the "scientific method" . Thanx, Don
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Author: Mark Pinner
Date: 2003-01-01 22:11
I am currently finishing an MA (Hons.) thesis and internet type referncing has undergone a couple of changes since I started. I believe that there are subtle differences. At the university I am enrolled in we use the following guidelines.
For e-mail an example would be:-
Hall, P. e-mail to the author 10/9/96
for newsgroups:-
Franks, R. posting on newsgroup <blahblah@blah.com> 01/01/03
for internet:-
www.blahblah.com/etc/etc/whatever 01/01/03.
Because this type of citation is still relatively new changes keep occuring in the referencing method. The above are the current guidelines that are used at Macquarie University in the Arts Faculty Centre for Contemporary Music Studies headed by Professor Phil Hayward. There will be other styles used elsewhere and it should be remembered that the majority of internet material is itself un-refereed rubbish and very often plagiarised, resources like woodwind.org do not fall under this category as material is generally 'informed' or at the very least considered opinion, so use should be fairly selective.
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Author: Hank
Date: 2003-01-01 22:29
Hi Mark,
Here in the colonies, the American Psychological Association (APA) Manual referenced above provides examples of all the type internet- based sources that you mention. The APA Manual went through a revision two years back and the current edition is the 5th.
Interestingly though, email is considered a persoanl communication and does not thus appear in the reference list (APA uses that term instead of Bibliography).
Check the following link for more details
http://www.apa.org/books/4200061.html
Your friend in research and writing,
Hank
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Author: Gordon (NZ)
Date: 2003-01-05 04:46
When I went through teacher training, one assignment was on the role of play in child development. I received a poor mark because the material had "come from a text book." Actually I had never read any part of any textbook remotely connected with the topic. I took the comment as a compliment and left it at that. Go figure!
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