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Reference style and manuscript review

Brian Leiter

A reader writes:

I'm wondering if you could have a discussion for your website about manuscript referencing styles. Some journals, mostly European-based, require in-text citation referencing. My own work is usually written in the style typically seen in the top journals in my subfield (which involve the use of footnotes or endnotes), which happen to be American-based. I have found that if a paper of mine is rejected in these journals, I have difficulty getting them accepted for review at European journals; to my surprise, most seem to require manuscripts be submitted in their referencing style, which in some cases would require significant revision to meet (my work is footnote-heavy). I am wondering what philosophers think of this practice. It seems to me that journals should be willing to accept for review papers of any referencing style, and only later request the author to convert the paper to its style after it is accepted. 

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16 responses to “Reference style and manuscript review”

  1. Thom Brooks

    I couldn't agree more. The importance of referencing style, etc. for any journal is to provide some consistency of its 'brand' (e.g., what articles in journal X look like). The Journal of Moral Philosophy has not insisted on any particular referencing style for submitted papers to be reviewed — although accepted papers have had to be reformatted in terms of house style. Many journals have similar editorial policies, but it would be great if even more did.

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  2. Manolo Martínez

    I was under the impression that most European journals already behaved in the manner suggested by the OP, and which I agree is the sensible one.

    As an aside, the OP might want to consider moving from standard text processors to markup-based systems. For example, in LaTeX changing from footnotes to endnotes is [very easy](http://roastata.wordpress.com/2011/08/16/turning-footnotes-into-endnotes/). LyX (www.lyx.org) is a great way to have the good features of LaTeX without having to learn the language.

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  3. Paul Gowder

    I generally have no problem getting U.S. journals to look at my papers in unusual reference formats (usually, I attach a note saying that I'll be happy to change to the house style on acceptance/r&r)… Perhaps this is a European quirk? In which case it might be advisable to do the initial submission in euro-style for the initial submission to more tolerant American journals.

    Also, is this something that can be automated? I'm told software like endnote can work with MS word (or, for the logic/math heavy, latex/bibtex) to just insert references in one's preferred form, but others will have to speak to how that works in practice,

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  4. Richard Baron

    I rather feel, but do not know, that there is a technical way round this, at least if the raw document is a text file (as is, for example, a LaTeX file), and if the footnotes in question are mere references, rather than expansions on the argument.

    Could a paper be written with some strings to demarcate references which would not be used elsewhere, for example xxyy Quine 1980 p. 32 xxzz? Then when a version was to be prepared for a journal that liked footnotes, one could use replace all to change the xxyy and the xxzz to the strings that would generate and terminate footnotes. When a version was to be prepared for a journal that liked in-text references, one could use replace all to change them to brackets.

    If one did this before running any formatting software, such as LaTeX, or reference software, such as BibTex, the right results should be obtained. But I don't know whether any glitches would lurk. And footnotes that were expansions on the argument would remain a problem, because they would probably need to be re-worded in order to stitch them into the main text.

    (The facilities mentioned in Manola Martinez's comment, which I have just seen, may do all that is required anyway. But I don't know whether they would handle switches between footnotes and in-text references.)

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  5. Eddy Nahmias

    Perhaps off topic, but could we just get everyone to agree to ban endnotes forever? Now that most of us read most things electronically (and many applications do not allow you to get to notes with a click), having to scroll back and forth from text to endnotes is ridiculous.
    (On topic, journals should not require submission in their publication style. We need not waste our time converting styles every time we have a paper rejected.)

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  6. Elizabeth

    The OP's suggestion seems clearly right, but even if one is not using LaTeX, using a bibliography software should make it relatively straightforward to switch in-text citation styles.

    I've bounced inefficiently between several bibliography managers, but am currently investing my time in setting up Bookends on a friend's strong recommendation. (More of my friends swear by Zotero or Mendeley, but I never really liked either.)

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  7. The reader

    I am the reader whose email Brian posted above.

    I should clarify that when I say that my work is "footnote-heavy" I mean not just that I have a lot of footnotes, but also that I have quite a bit of discussion in them.

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  8. ranebowchile

    I have run into this problem before, and what I have found challenging about it is not the pure format issues per say but rather converting or, in many cases, deleting some of the remarks made in the footnote. This process, the most recent time I had to do it, was not fun at all. In the cases where I could keep the information, it was very challenging to incorporate it in a smooth and stylistic way; in the cases where I had to delete material, I felt that I was diminishing the essay which made choosing what to omit very hard. However, I can both see the attraction of using in-text, no-footnote style citing and of requiring authors to use it, so I'm rather torn about coming to a final judgment about the issue.

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  9. Sara L. Uckelman

    When a paper is footnote heavy and there is extensive discussion in the footnotes, the problem I see with the "why can't the journal just review it in that format and then ask for it to be rewritten once it's accepted?" is that such rewriting is not going to be merely cosmetic, it is going to affect style, content, and flow. Which means that the before and after versions could possibly significantly different — which means that the before versions that the reviewers get isn't really the paper that the author wants published. And, to be honest, I'd be rather unhappy if I got a paper to referee which was not in a format/presentation that the author actively intended to have published, i.e., one that he submitted with the assumption he'd rewrite after acceptance.

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  10. Dean C. Rowan

    "Lengthy, discursive notes—especially footnotes—should be reduced or integrated into the text…" Thus prescribes Chicago Manual of Style, 16th ed., available here: http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/16/ch14/ch14_sec051.html, one of the preeminent arbiters of the American approach. The OP's problem, in other words, is not the conflict of styles, but the relegation of substantial text to the foot of the page, as Dr. Uckelman points out above. I can think of one exception in legal print publishing that works, albeit not smoothly: Michael Graham's Handbook of Federal Evidence includes vast ranges of pages with one or no lines of text, the rest notes. The footnote, in other words, often consumes the entire page and beyond. But Graham's Handbook is not a work of scholarship. It's an apparatus for identifying cases (within the copious notes) that construe provisions of the Federal Rules of Evidence (the meager text). Unless the OP is taking an approach like Graham's, s/he should strongly consider incorporating most of the discussion north of the footer.

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  11. Ben Wolfson

    "Now that most of us read most things electronically"

    Objection, your honor. Assumes facts not in evidence.

    Also, properly done PDFs can easily accommodate internal hyperlinks to the endnotes and back to the source in the text.

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  12. Ben Saunders

    It seems that two distinct issues have arisen. First, are references given in (foot/end) notes or in text? Second, are discursive footnotes encouraged, allowed, or banned?

    As to the first, I agree that journals should not insist on house style at the initial submission stage. The second, though raised in comments above (#9, #10), appears to be a distinct issue. A journal might allow discursive notes, while any references within them are given in text. So, for the OP to change his/her papers to suit such a journal would still be a largely cosmetic (though time-consuming) issue.

    Perhaps the issue is that the European journals object to many/lengthy discursive footnotes. If this is the case, then it's true that non-cosmetic changes are required, but then the issue is really about writing style, rather than referencing format.

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  13. Nate

    Note that the second edition of _Garner's Modern American Usage_ suggests only that "textual footnotes […] be kept to a minimum," not that they be eliminated. (p. 358)

    I can't quite see how philosophy, or at least ancient philosophy, would get on without textual footnotes. You might want to check up on my philological research, and I often ought to summarize it, but there's a good chance you don't want to read about it. I might want to prove that I can handle an objection without interrupting a train of thought to prove it. And so on.

    It is instructive to read Garner's comment that "overabundant, overflowing footnotes are the mark of an insecure scholar–often one who gets lost in the byways of analysis and wants to show off." This is a wise remark, but I don't think Garner had contemporary philosophy in mind when he wrote it–the standards to which we hold ourselves make "byways of analysis" unavoidable.

    I also agree with earlier respondents in that if you are comfortable enough with computers to be using the best software (most of which is free), making this sort of formatting change should be as simple as editing one line in a .tex file or similar.

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  14. The reader

    I think that the best philosophy papers will have foot- or endnotes, notes which often — as Nate notes — address — or at least attempt to address — objections without interrupting the discussion to do so. (Reading endnotes, however, are a pain, no matter what format — paper or electronic — they're in.)

    Indeed, I surmise that, all else being equal, philosophy papers with (discursive) notes will contain less to object to than philosophy papers without (discursive) notes. I will leave this for someone else to test.

    So I think that The Chicago Manual of Style should not be followed here.

    And I agree with Dr. Uckelman that converting a footnote-heavy paper (in my sense) to a paper with only in-text citation — indeed, to any which merely excludes discursive notes — will affect style, content and flow. But I think (a) this will tend to be to the detriment of the paper, though (b) it will be a stretch to say that even when these changes involve significant revisions they will amount to a different paper. The reason for (b) is that the paper will still be making the same argument, even if it may be slightly weaker because some potential objections could not be addressed in a manner which could be smoothly incorporated into the revised text.

    So I think that the American approach is superior to the European approach in this matter, and that even if this is not true, there is still no good reason to insist that papers submitted for review be in the writing/referencing style of the journal.

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  15. Bence

    While I agree with the original poster that journals shouldn't care wither it's (Smith 1999) in the main text or the full reference in footnotes, I'm puzzled by the suggestion that this may be an American/European difference: it's not (Nous, PPR, Imprint are all very much American, Phil Quarterly very much European). If anything, it's a science vs. humanities difference: history, English, etc journals tend to do the latter, science journals always do the former. Within philosophy, older journals tend to insist on this full reference in footnotes business, as far as I can tell.

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  16. Dean C. Rowan

    I have to defer to "the reader" and others here as to the characteristics of the best philosophy papers. But I wonder if there isn't a better mechanism than the footnote to provide for digressions, such as an excursus appended to the paper. It would be better in virtually every respect: easier for the reader, more flexible for stylistic adjustment, a clearer distinction between main argument and objections (although this clearer distinction would disrupt the smooth incorporation notes almost afford). Anyway, this discussion points out how we are in the midst of a transition of the formalities of scholarly communication. The evolving habits of authors, editors/publishers, and readers, spurred by the technologies we use in those roles, challenge long accepted conventions. This reminds me to get around to reading Anthony Grafton's book about the footnote, too.

    The Chicago Manual itself supports the distinction identified by Bence above.

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