It is a very tiresome job to format the reference section of the article as every journal has got its own style. Can't we follow some universally accepted standard like APA to save the precious time of the researchers.
I agree that this would make researchers' life much easier: basically, all the journals want to get the same information about the sources used in the article (authors, publication year, the article's title, journal...), but, unfortunately, they have different requirements (even if they tell that they use a certain style, there are still differences: e.g. should initials or full first names be used, what whould be in Italic, should doi be added or not...). To some extent, some editors use these style differences as an argument to reject articles, as using a different style may be a sign that this article was submitted to another journal before and rejected, but the quality of the paper is still the most important, so, losing this argument should not make editors' life much harder.
Thanks Tila you are also of the same opinion. Now the question is that how can this problem be solved.
Many publishers are privately owned, they cannot be forced to use the same style and for some universities, using a certain style has become a tradition, so, unfortunately, this problem cannot be solved easily.
In my opinion there should be an apex body at global level dealing with legacy of the writing style of Thesis, Dissertations, Articles etc. particularly the reference section. So directions regarding the writing style should come from that governing body which must be enforced accordingly. This is the way which I think is practically possible to streamline this.
Such an organization could be established but how to force publishers and universities to follow its guidelines? They are located in different countries with different laws and traditions...
Hi Tiia I was out of station so could not reply. There are some institutions at global level just like WTO governing world trade. So similar sort of body can be established at global level for governing publishing process.
In that case, governments should be involved like in WTO (or at least, Ministries of Education), but for governments and most probably also, ministries, this matter is not important enough.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Microbiology
- Scientific Research