Roger started a thread on a detail of
Stata Journal submission.
As one of the Editors of the Stata Journal,
I hope a few comments may be helpful here.
First, we will of course look carefully at
this suggestion in conjunction with Jeff Pitblado
and others at StataCorp who are the in-house
experts.
Second, here is an immediate reaction without
prejudice to any decision that will be made
on this.
Roger is understandably a little irritated at dates,
journal issue and page numbers
that are silly and possibly even misleading (e.g.
2001) on pre-publication drafts. One take on this
is that the more absurd they are, the more obvious
it is that they need to be fixed.
The inescapable fact is that only just before electronic
publication of any issue is anybody certain about the date
and other details of anything published in the SJ.
Papers can even be scheduled for one issue and then
pulled for the next by the Editors, as a matter of
getting the number of pages about right, and so forth.
So if vol.1, pages 1 on, 2001 is not accurate,
so too would be any other date or other details.
Further, changing the date to 2006 or 2007 or whatever
could be even more misleading. (Not to say
presumptuous in pre-judging the Editors' Olympian
decisions!)
Somewhat along the lines of Nicola Orsini's suggestion,
the way forward may be for any author to add details
clearly flagging a _submission date_. A line like
this can be added prominently and it is not much
work to remove it before publication.
That said, a pre-publication draft -- or more
precisely, a submitted version -- is mainly
to be regarded as a document shared between the
author, the Editors of the Stata Journal, any
reviewers and in-house staff at StataCorp.
Authors who want to share their work with others
outside that quadrilateral--
what is the point of doing it otherwise! -- should
feel free to modify how they present it to those
others. It would be neither appropriate nor necessary for
the Stata Journal to comment on how authors do
that.
Let me also stress that the Stata Journal distributes
free reprints and that authors have the opportunity
to purchase more, so making pre-publication drafts
available to others is an author's decision.
Finally, I suggest that matters like these are best
dealt with directly by communicating with the Editors.
There is nothing to hide here, but equally going
straight to the decision-makers is a better way to do it.
Nick
[email protected]
Newson, Roger B
> A suggestion for a minor improvement (as I see it) for the
> next version
> of the -sjlatex- package. In the file -main.tex-, distributed with
> -sjlatex-, there should ideally be 2 lines reading
>
> % EDITORS: Change volume number, issue number, month, and year
> \sjsetissue{$vv$}{$i$}{Whatever month}{$yyyy$}
>
> (or something similar) just before the line reading
>
> \begin{document}
>
> This would have the effect of causing Stata Journal pre-publication
> drafts to be Volume vv, Number i, with publication date
> "Whatever month,
> yyyy". This would make everybody's pre-publication drafts a bit less
> confusing, because they currently claim to be Volume 1, Number 1, with
> publication date 2001, which of course they are not, and
> never will be.
>
> I would like to thank Garry Anderson of the University of Melbourne,
> Australia, for mentioning to me this issue of confusion arising from
> Stata Journal pre-publication drafts.
*
* For searches and help try:
* http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/res/findit.html
* http://www.stata.com/support/statalist/faq
* http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/
