Proposal for A World Congress on Referencing Styles

I have been busy over the last few days correcting proofs for two forthcoming articles. One of the journals accepts neither footnotes nor endnotes so I had to find place in the text for the >20 footnotes I had. As usual, most of these footnotes result directly from the review process so getting rid of them is not an option even if many are of marginal significance. The second journal accepts only footnotes – no in-text referencing at all – so I had to rework all the referencing into footnotes. Both journals demanded that I provide missing places of publication for books and missing page numbers for articles. Ah, the joys of academic work!

But seriously… How is it possible that a researcher working in the XXI century still has to spend his/her time changing commas into semicolons and abbreviating author names to conform to the style of a particular journal? I just don’t get it. I am all for referencing and beautifully-formatted bibliographies but can’t we all agree on one single style? Does it really matter if the years of a publication are put in brackets or not? Who cares if the first name of the author follows the family name or the other way round? Do we really need to know the place of publication of a book? Where do you actually look for this information? Is it Thousand Oaks, London, or New Delhi? All three appear on the back of a random SAGE book I picked from the shelf… Who would ever need to know whether it was Thousand Oaks or London in the first place? Maybe libraries, but they certainly don’t get their data from my references. Obviously, the current referencing system is a relic from very different and distant times when knowing the publishing place was necessary to get access to the book. Now, collecting and providing this information is a waste of time and space.

And yes, I have heard of Endnote and BibTeX, and I do use reference management software. But most journals still don’t have their required styles available for import into these programs. So the publisher doesn’t find it necessary to hire somebody for a few hours to prepare an official Endnote style sheet for the journal, but it demands from all authors to spend days in order to rework their references to conform to its rules?!

And why are there different referencing styles anyways? Can you imagine the discussions that journal editors and publishers have before they settle for a particular referencing style?

– Herr Professor, I must insist that we require journal names to be in italics!
– That’s the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard – everybody knows that journal names are supposed to be in bold, not in italics!
– But gentlemen, research by our esteemed colleagues in psychology has shown that journal names put in a regular font and encircled by commas are perceived as 3% more reliable than others.
– Nonsense! I demand that journal names are underlined and every second one in the list should be abbreviated as well.

And so on and so forth… To remedy the situation I boldly propose a World Congress on Referencing Styles. All the academic disciplines and publishers will send delegates to resolve this perennial problem once and for all. There will be panels like Page Numbers: Preceded by a Comma, a Colon, or a Dash, and seminars on topics like Recent Trends in Abbreviating Author Names. No doubt several months of deliberation will be needed, but eventually the two main ‘Chicago’ and ‘Harvard’ parties will reach a compromise which will be endorsed by the United Nations amid the ovations of the world leaders. The academic universe would never be the same again!

Until that day, happy referencing to you all!