[Esip-citationguidelines] scooped in 1979

[Sarah Ramdeen]

On the topic of old citations, this is one of my favorites.... a letter to
the editor from 1817 discussing the value of metadata for physical samples
(before the term metadata was cool)

XLV. On forming collections of geological specimens; and respecting those
of Mr. Smith in the British Museum
https://doi.org/10.1080/14786441708637776

“[A] fossil shell, petrifaction, or mineral is useless to the geologist,
unless it be accompanied with a proper description of the stratum, and of
the exact place from whence it was obtained: hence it is necessary that a
descriptive catalogue should always accompany a collection of geological
specimens” (p.269)

On Wed, Oct 28, 2020 at 12:12 PM Matthew Mayernik via
Esip-citationguidelines <esip-citationguidelines at lists.esipfed.org> wrote:

> Hi Mark,
> Good pointer. There was definitely a fair amount of activity around that
> time regarding citation of social science data. Another article by Howard
> White from 1982 (citation below) started with this sentence: "An argument
> by no means new is that social scientists who work with machine‐readable
> data files (MRDF) should cite them in their writings, with formal
> references set apart from main text, just as they now do books, papers and
> reports".
> White, H.D. (1982). Citation analysis of data file use. Library Trends, 31
> (3), 467–477. http://hdl.handle.net/2142/7222
>
> I am always struck by the "by no means new" in that quote. I think it
> demonstrates how this is a recurring problem that has to be dealt with anew
> for each generation of researchers and technologies - how/why to cite data.
>
> Matt
>
> On Tue, Oct 27, 2020 at 4:31 PM Mark Parsons via Esip-citationguidelines <
> esip-citationguidelines at lists.esipfed.org> wrote:
>
>> Dodd, S. A. (1979). Bibliographic references for numeric social science
>> data files: Suggested guidelines. Journal of the American Society for
>> Information Science, 30(2), 77–82. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.4630300203
>>
>> If you are paywalled, try: sci-hub.do/10.1002/asi.4630300203
>>
>> A few observations:
>> - it grapples with many of the same issues we do - the vagueness of how
>> data are currently referenced, the inadequacy of current standards, the
>> challenge of defining the citable object, the notion of machine
>> readability, the confusion around terms and roles…
>> - the elements it defines aren’t that much different than ours. I love
>> “General material designator” sorta like type but also akin to identifier.
>> They also pay good attention to versioning and author roles. Sound familiar?
>> - it might have worked if the internet and then the web hadn’t followed
>> so soon after.
>> - the conclusion about uptake is charmingly naive (see note about
>> internet above)
>> - it notes the need to be able to cite data even before it is archived!
>> - more evidence that social science data, especially census data, tend to
>> be pioneers in data science
>>
>> cheers,
>>
>> -m.
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-- 
Sarah Ramdeen, PhD
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