Seeing the unseenstrictly editorial
November 14, 2006
To avoid the headache, doubtless utterly my own making, of the EFA website, I dwell for too long a time on the picayune vagaries of scholarly and academic writing. On one absurdity in particular, the concept of a "see unpublished manuscript" reference. The camaraderie of editorial discussion lists provides, at least, some solace.
Last night ...
G: The stumbling block —just to be clear— is telling the reader to go check the unpublished paper, which by definition the reader cannot do.
A: Well that's just plain *rude* of the author. Rewording is certainly called for.
And this morning ...
L: Helen asks logically for "an explanation that makes a modicum of sense" regarding putting an unpublished paper in a reference list.
Unpublished papers get circulated a lot a scientific conferences, and are often works in progress. And sometimes they are written by students for coursework, sometimes even a thesis. And sometimes they are papers that were meant to be published but never got that far. Or maybe they are reports originally meant for internal distribution. In any case, just because they are not published does not mean they are unavailable. The interested and dedicated reader can track down the author (or sometimes institution) and ask for them. At the very least, the reader should be able to contact the author of the article in which it was referred to and ask for a copy.
It would be great if all referenced material was published. Would certainly make our lives easier. But it's messy out there. If you're at a conference, listen to a great speaker, and pick up a copy of his manuscript afterward and simply HAVE to refer to it in your work because it set you on a specific path, it would be a shame if you couldn't because the manuscript has not progressed far enough. Your choice would be either to ignore this great idea, or lie about it and claim you got it on your own. Given those choices, I'd rather see credit go where it's due — to an unpublished paper.
G: Many thanks for a comprehensive and sound explanation, but I admit I'm still puzzled by the rationale of a "see unpublished paper X" reference. It's the see component &mdash "Ho there, see something you can't see" — that ties me in knots. I therefore edited it to read "unpublished paper X says so and so." The author and manuscript are still a citation and a reference list entry and can still be tracked down. They just don't sound (to me) quite so (ahem) silly.
L: Well, that's just because you're thinking and actually reading the material instead of mechanically editing!!Seriously, I think this is one of those things that researchers are so used to that it doesn't bring them up short. That doesn't make it right, however. I think your edit was a good one.
Sigh.