Tuesday, August 8
Tuesday, August 08, 2006 | 
Posted by
twilight blue
I just got an email from the editor of a reputable medical journal asking me to reformat the references for an article which I've already reformatted twice, per his ever changing moods (I believe he would say, "evolving sense of the journal's style"). In reply, I sent him the two documents which contain the previously requested reformatted references - in exactly the styles he asked for at the time - with a note that said that I am unwilling to reformat the references a third time and that I trust that his renown editorial staff will be up to the task. I noted further the extreme inconvenience of the journal's decision to "individualize" traditional reference styles (que trendy!), which means that while authors can reformat via bibliographic software (e.g, EndNote), they then need to tweak each of their (say, 150) references by hand.
I did not write "do you realize that that your reference style changes more quickly than hemlines on the runways of New York -- and with less consequence?" But I might still...
I did not write "do you realize that that your reference style changes more quickly than hemlines on the runways of New York -- and with less consequence?" But I might still...
5 comments:
I hate idiosyncratic reference styles, despite my being relentlessly fashionable.
That is insane, twilight, I'm sorry to hear it! Regarding EndNote, isn't it possible to customize its use? I thought it was. Of course, from what you're saying, it sounds like this editor may be so quirky that no matter how much you can customize it, it's not going to work. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the editor spent time looking for something that is not possible to do in EndNote. This may be his frustration with not being able to do any more research, you know, 'cause he's an editor now. Totally unbelievable though, I mean not, b/c it is academia, but still. It sucks, so sorry to hear it!
My advisor made me redo references in a paper we were working on like five times, because I'd never used EndNote and he didn't feel like giving me basic instructions, so they kept coming out wrong. Then I think he did something that reformatted the whole thing and somehow made it necessary for me to do the references YET AGAIN.
But the point is, ugh, I'm sorry.
I'm impressed that you responded as you did, and as you should have.
Ahem. I once wrote to a journal asking to have my acknowledgements include "The author would further like to thank those editors with whom she has had the good fortune to work who, in keeping with standard [disciplinary] practice, permit judicious use of the first person."
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