Citing (multi)media in scholary communication
Claudia Koltzenburg
Friday, 28 August 2009 14:24 UTC
Imagine you are in the process of drafting a submission, and that studying a certain 3D model animation (or a video, or some code) has generated an interesting ‘Aha! effect’ that provides you with an important clue for what you want to communicate – would you ever acknowledge this ‘multimedia’ file in your contribution’s references?
If yes, what does this depend on?
- its content?
- this content having been put on the web after peer review?
- a citiation export feature being available?
- your reference managing tool accepting all file formats?
- the file having a doi?
- the file being itself part of a journal article or its supplement?
- it being open access?
- …?
Many argue that files on the web are too volatile, and often this is intended as an argument against multimedia files (or against referencing any of the new web based formats).
Let us take a closer look, somewhat behind the scenes: Why cite a traditional article from a journal if, for proprietary reasons, it might not be available any more as soon as their publisher goes out of business or turns of the servers – i.e., publishers who in their e-bundle contracts with libraries grant access only, explicitely excluding the permission to store institutionally any of the files accessed?
So why place more trust in references to journal articles than in references of any other file on the web? This actually concerns articles behind paywalls and open access (OA) articles alike. In such a perspective maybe only OA green articles seem reliable (if we did follow the philosophy of LOCKSS – Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe in the first place, that is – maybe this links to the issue of multiple dois, but that is a different issue – or maybe is is not?).
Referencing sources in any type of format, I would argue, provides an opportunity to liberate thinking habits, drafting habits and publishing habits, too. Consider this observation: consequential intellectual work takes place in myriad ways outside of traditional scholarly genres – which links in a way to what Bora Zivkovic termed The Ethics of The Quote -
so, what exactly are the arguments against acknowledging by standard referencing your ‘Aha! effect’ when using an item of new web based media?
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If the webpage (or other digital object) cannot be archived (e.g. by WebCite), I’d prefer not to cite it in a journal article.
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This is an important issue for the preservation and sustainability part of the issue; and I suppose it would certainly be useful for such initiatives to be around for years to come, too.
An author looking at the WebCite® archive form would probably wish to know if there are any tools yet that support automatic exports from reference managers into such forms. -
The question was: how to cite digital multimedia sources.
For scientific documents is is easy:
citation of the work of others is done if the autor(s) want
- to give credit to the work of others, which they used, wanting the reader to refer to it.
- to point to the work of others which they see relevant and want the reader to infer to it.
- and they want that these pointers are valid as long as possible into the future.Scientific document means, the author(s) try their very best to point to the most long-lasting address.
In the case of a digital text document this could be a institutional (DINI-certified) data-provider, which assures to have realized a copy at the National Library.
(preferred over the citation of the respective publication in a scientific journal, since the publishers do not assure long time visibility (I alone have two cases where publications were ‘lost’, when the publisher was sold).
In the case of possibly more ‘dilute’ digital work, e.g. elearning sources, living documents, group reports etc, scientific way of working of the author means they should do their very best to their knowledge: add the link, add email of corresponding author, add affiliation of and name of creator and her/his email, add related work of the authors; All this information will help the reader to find either the cited work itself, even if it now has another link, or at least closely related work of their authors, which possibly could be used as well for the intention of the reader, e.g. elearning source to be used in a class, 3D movie for demonstrating a certain effect.
In essence: the citation should be ‘scientific’: as complete and helpful as possible, and could well be redundant. -
The question was: how to cite digital multimedia sources. – well, the HOW addresses practical issues (liked that: “as complete and helpful as possible”)
it is linked to the WHY (yet they are two different questions, maybe),
here is mine again, linked to both: What makes authors refrain from referencing multimedia files? This one addresses motives and habits of individuals and their communities,
here is another: What is perceived as ‘valid’?
the answers might differ considerably.are there standards emerging? Which field of research are they from, which part of the globe? whose investment are they?
Jim Till’s posting addresses another hurdle missing in my list, if a reference can be archived on a server other than the one it was first published on – thanks – let’s add it
here is another possible hurdle:
it depends on
- if my peers do it…
- …?re certified open repositories (OR) – good point, thanks – new question: (how) are ORs dealing with non-text files as regards their referenceability? any examples?
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Seems to me there are two issues in your post: how (or whether) to cite multimedia; and how reliable is web archiving? To take the second first, a journal may go out of business, but its archive will still exist (in paper at least). There are many libraries that archive journals digitally as well as in paper form, and various collaborative projects that exist for this purpose. So even if a journal goes out of business and its web archive goes down, that journal should still be archived in libraries and/or via a collaboration such as Portico or the US National Library of Medicine.
The issue of how (or whether) to cite multimedia files is different, I think. Obviously where there is a tag, identifier, URL this can be cited, either formally in the reference list or informally within the text of an article (and hence available for datamining). JoVE (Journal of Visualised Experiments) might be worth looking at in this context. If your point is that multimedia “referencing” is in its infancy, I think you are right!
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Maxine, thank you for your pointers,
and yes, there is a bundle if issues linked to each other and one of the tasks I see is to find out how they are linked and for what reasons.
During the recent discussion with Cameron Neylon and Christina Pikas, tweeted above, it occurred to me that Jim Till’s posting might actually generate another vital question:
do we stop reading or watching an interesting source the second we realize it might not be deemed referenceable in the context we wish to publish in?
let me add to my list above:
- if it is deemed referenceable (informally or in the reference list or…)
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