Re: Chat: E-Archives Challenge: Results

From: Tim Brody <tdb198_at_ECS.SOTON.AC.UK>
Date: Tue, 29 May 2001 12:30:35 +0100

On Mon, 28 May 2001, Wentz, Reinhard wrote:

> Since issuing the challenge I have thought of a definite limitation of
> e-archiving: The list of references in e-archived articles will never look
> as beautiful as the ones produced by publishers' professional proof readers,
> copy editors and other valuable members of a publishing team. I can send a
> sample (in colour!) of such a list to anybody doubting that statement and
> also some pictures of what professional copy editors (what a splendid body
> of people!) are up to in their spare time.

*cough*

Do I get 10 quid if I point out you're completely wrong?

e-archiving will require authors to provide reference lists in standard
formats (or a format that can be heuristically extracted). Thus, using
e-archives, your reference lists will look as elegant as you wish because
the format will no longer be determined by author, journal or field, but
by the person viewing them!

(and the reason for this is that author's citations won't be shown unless
they produce good quality metadata and references that can be
automatically linked)

Of course, this does not negate the old axiom "rubbish in, rubbish out",
but whatever goes in, it will look very "beautiful" on the way out.

All the best,
Tim Brody
Received on Wed Jan 03 2001 - 19:17:43 GMT