Several journals today have substituted literature references in the text by numbers instead of author names, followed by the year of publication. To know which author had uttered or supported the idea, uttered in the text, one has to consult the corresponding number in the list of references. The references, therefore, are put into numerical order.
Both the author name approach and the mere numbering of referring have their advantages and disadvantages. However, a great disadvantage of the numbering approach is that the list of references is quite chaotic because it is not alphabetically ordered.
Therefore, I would like to suggest that journals with a numerical reference list offer a free access online version of this list in alphabetical order.
Am I the only one in the scientific community who feels this way?
I think that medical and engineering journals follow this tradition - and not without good reasons I guess.
Knowledge is represented as accumulative and objective in those disciplines, and I think that the numbering approach underscores that the focus is on the finding and not on the people behind it.
The APA citation style makes it clear that findings are parts of an argument and are uttered by people representing diverse frameworks, or trying to clarify concepts within a framework.
Regarding your suggestion of reference lists being ordered alphabetically and then numbered, I agree. But I still think that the APA style is more honest from an epistemological perspective.
Thanks for being the first to reply. Actually, I did not suggest that the reference list should be ordered alphabetically first and then numbered. That would be another solution for the "problem". I suggested putting the reference list in alphabetical order on internet only. A third way out would be to impose such a format onto the numerical reference list that those interested could reorder it themselves after copying it into a WORD-file. WORD offers ways to order lists and tables.
As Nina stated, it is indeed the subject matter - and its progression - that should "shine" - not the authors, who are anyway easy to find if you are looking at the paper in a pdf reader - the search tools there are very simple.
The ordering of the authors in an individual paper is conflicted, too ...
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