Re: st: Suggestion - Citing references from Stata Journal

[Richard Williams <richardwilliams.ndu@gmail.com>]

At 02:57 PM 4/12/2012, Tiago V. Pereira wrote:
> Weak or not, the argument is real, and we found that in practice. Perhaps
> (but I am not sure, of course) researchers from biomedical fields have a
> more dynamic research (i.e. they need to publish faster) and deal with a
> larger number of references, making them unwilling to type references to
> speed up their manuscripts.
>
> For example, nearly all meta-analyses published mentioning Stata have used
> -metan-. However, few papers cite -metan-. Why is that?

I don't know, but I doubt that it was because it would take too long 
to type up a citation. I see that the -metan- help file does not 
request citations nor does it provide a suggested citation, so that 
may be part of it. If I was using -metan- and the authors had an 
appropriate article about it they wanted you to cite, I would 
probably try to fit such a citation in somewhere.

I might decide to not cite something because I felt it was not 
appropriate to cite it. But if I felt it deserved citation, I 
wouldn't decide to not cite it because it would be a hassle to type 
up the citation.

I think a lot of times it is a good idea to provide citations, not so 
much because you want to thank the author, but because the citation 
will help readers look up materials that will help them to understand 
the method better. Many (most?) Stata Journal articles aren't just 
showing how to use a program, they are explaining the rationale 
behind the method used. I think people should cite my gologit2 
article in SJ, not so much to give me thanks, but so that readers 
know where to go if they want to understand the methods better.

I agree (although others may not) that it is more debatable whether 
you should cite a program that, say, helps you make your tables more 
attractive or manipulate your data set more easily. Those strike me 
as being more like technical aids that are separate from an 
understanding of the statistical techniques used. I had a paper where 
I thanked the authors of outreg2 and esttab in the acknowledgments, 
which seemed more appropriate to me, but maybe others would say I 
should have provided some sort of citation.


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Richard Williams, Notre Dame Dept of Sociology
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