Grand Unified Citation Theory: Response to TechRhet Thread

Michael Wojcik writes, " the real problem [with creating a new citation system] would be getting other people - notably journal editors - to accept it." But actually, having created a citation format of my own way back when, the challenge isn't with the journal editors but with getting teachers to use it.

Michael Salvo is correct that citation formats aren't really all that different—they use the same elements, but join them in different ways and forms. In The Columbia Guide to Online Style, I attempt to define those elements and to explain (at least briefly) why there are different ways of emphasizing them by discipline: the COS-Humanities Style, designed to work with styles such as MLA and Chicago, for instance, focuses on the author of the work (ethos based), while the COS-Scientific Style, which works with styles such as APA and CSE, follows the author/date system, whereby the date something is published is often of primary importance.

That said, I think we (not I, but WE) could actually design something that works—and which would work better with bibliographic software which, quite frankly, does a lousy job with citing anything that is not standard print books/journals/newspapers.

For me, as a teacher, I think it is more important to help students (future scholars!):

1. Identify the TYPE of source they are using, and
   
2. Identify the ELEMENTS they need to record
   

Then it's actually not so difficult to put these together (using bibliographic software, or a style sheet or manual) as needed.

I actually LIKE what APA has done by encouraging/requiring the inclusion of DOIs in citations. These Digital Object Identifiers are better than URLs even for accessing/locating documents. MLA? Well, see my MLA rant at http://mywabbit.blogspot.com/2008/09/mla-rant.html.

I think it's very interesting (okay, remember, I have a very sick sense of humor!) that:

• MLA couldn't figure out that the "URL" created by online databases wasn't a real URL, so, yeah, it was ridiculously long and unwieldy and didn't work outside a particular database anyway, so they just gave up and decided to just say "Web" (even though items in library databases aren't actually ON the Web, just accessed FROM it). And excluding URLs (or other identifiers) for items that are on the Web—we can just google them??—is the utmost in ridiculous-ity!
• APA released their new manual with PAGES of errata—they finally released a new edition of the new edition, of course, which corrects those errata, but the damage is done….
  

I think the Columbia Guide still works (although the latest edition is 2006, so new models might be useful), but as Charlie Lowe continues to prod me, we can take this further.

But the challenge is to get people to listen to us—and remember that K-12 teachers learned MLA in first-year comp classes, then learned APA to use in their education classrooms, then they use whatever book is foisted upon them which usually includes MLA for their students to (not) learn.

Many first-year composition teachers are also given textbooks chosen by committee—many of the members of which are literature-trained (can you say "MLA"?). So here we are.

And our own textbook publishers, who once DID actually include Columbia Online Style have given up on including it since no one (outside our small group) knows what it is anyway—so no one bothered to look at it.

So, am I saying we can't change the world? Not at all!

We can:

1. Develop a bibliography generator that will actually work (knowing what we know about the elements of citation and identifying the variety of types of sources that researchers actually use).
   
2. Work with librarians, educators ACROSS THE DISCIPLINES (this isn't something we, as writing teachers, can do ourselves), editors, and publishers to develop formats that can be easily generated, and that help to ensure the sustainability of links/identifiers, such that the potential ephemerality of digital scholarship is addressed.
   
3. Teach our students (and demand that our textbook publishers include) whatever we come up with.
   

Maybe someday, everyone will do as I did in my presentation at the Computers and Writing Conference last week, when I said I believed we should "just turn our backs" on MLA (um, if you weren't there, I was wearing a black denim jacket with a very bling rhinestone skull and crossbones on the back!).