Constructing citations: reviewing chat transcripts to improve citation assistance as a service

PurposeUsing chat transcripts from Indiana University Libraries, the authors examined a subset of transcripts involving citations. From this analysis, they propose improvements for citation assistance as a holistic service.Design/methodology/approachTwo years of chat transcripts were examined and questions containing citation-related keywords were segregated for further examination. The authors used a test data set to create a coding scheme for the questions and responses. This scheme was then applied to all the citation-related transcripts.Findings390 of 11,553 transcripts included interactions about citations. In 42% of the transcripts, no specific citation style was mentioned. American Psychological Association and Modern Language Association were the most frequently mentioned citation styles by chat users. Business reports (company data and market research), periodicals (journal, newspaper or magazine articles), websites and government documents were the most often asked about formats, but there was a wide variety of other unusual formats. Questions about EndNote were more common than other types of citation management software. Chat staff utilized a variety of responses including guiding the student by example, directing to an online resource for more information (85% of the responses) or referring to a citation management expert. An unexpected amount of hedging words in the responses indicates the presence of anxiety on the part of chat staff in responding to these types of questions.Originality/valueThis paper goes beyond most existing studies of chat transcripts by using chat transcripts as data to guide service improvements for a commonly asked but not typically discussed set of questions.

PRACTICAL GUIDE TO AVOIDING PITFALLS IN RESEARCH PAPER WRITING

Pitfalls in research paper writing is a very important subject matter in academia, especially in research in arts and social sciences, but there is a dearth of literature focusing exclusively on the issue of pitfalls in scholarly research. Thus, the objective of this descriptive study is to examine the major pitfalls in research paper writing and how to avoid them. The study elucidates several pitfalls in the writing of a research paper, a Master’s or Ph.D thesis/dissertation, that is, the inadequacies observed in the following components of a typical research work: research title, abstract, introduction, literature review, methodology, data presentation and discussion. Others are incomplete and improper referencing as well as inadequate use of language and conclusion. The paper also highlights some research tips to avoid the pitfalls and enhance research originality, capacity and acceptability at the local and international levels of readership. Based on the above, the study encourages postgraduate students and young researchers to adhere strictly to the rules of approved referencing styles such as the American Psychological Association (APA) and Modern Language Association (MLA), while observing also the editorial guidelines of reputable scholarly journals, research institutions or research grant donor agencies.

Freestyle Referencing for the African Journal of Inter/Multidisciplinary Studies: Exactly why not?

Dear Editor, After experiencing the disappointment of a rejection letter from a journal editor regarding a submission, an author will often immediately start searching for another journal in which to publish his or her work. A major consideration in this search will be the referencing style specified by the journal concerned. The range of possible format requirements is almost infinite, but fortunately, most journals follow acknowledged styles, such as those of the American Psychological Association, the Modern Language Association or the Chicago/Turabian style. Transforming a text from one referencing style to another is a cumbersome task – though some librarians may disregard this concern, declaring that software such as Mendeley and Endnotes is able to convert ‘appropriately captured’ references seamlessly from one style to another. A problem central to this approach relates to the ‘appropriate capturing’ of such references, a task that requires extreme diligence. For example, the capturing of an author’s first names might be unnecessary when using style A, but could be required by style B – a detail further complicated by the fact that some sources record only the author’s initials. Another problem posed by conversion is the fact that many journals profess to use a standard, acknowledged referencing style, but then impose idiosyncratic house style rules, where they deviate from the norm. Clearly, converting from one referencing style to another is an intricate, time-consuming endeavour and most authors would prefer to select a journal that uses the same referencing style as the one they originally selected. Why, then, does the African Journal of Inter/Multidisciplinary Studies (AJIMS) not adopt a policy of free referencing styles? Free referencing refers to the journal considering and reviewing articles irrespective of the referencing style used – subject to the style being specified and then applied consistently throughout the article. As most reviewers are exposed to a variety of referencing styles, this should not impact negatively on the review process. I believe that adopting freestyle referencing would attract more authors to AJIMS, thus enlarging the pool of submissions from which the editor can select. Particularly as AJIMS is a progressive journal, and as inter- and multidisciplinary studies require an embracement of diversity, AJIMS is well-positioned to follow a policy of freestyle referencing. Freestyle referencing is not a new concept. Indeed, it has been widely advocated and is accepted by many respectable journals, such as the 350 titles with Taylor & Francis and Routledge, as well as the 92 Wiley journals that allow it. I am firmly of the opinion that the adoption of freestyle referencing would reduce unnecessary labour expended in efforts to disseminate knowledge and would also allow researchers to focus on researching, all without adding to the load carried by AJIMS’s editorial staff. Indeed, I believe that such a move might well enlarge the pool of submissions to AJIMS, providing the publication with an additional competitive advantage.

Interview: Kathleen Fitzpatrick on Open Scholarship, Humanities Commons, and more

This interview with Kathleen Fitzpatrick is the second installment in the new interview series of Open Access in Media Studies—in which we ask researchers and librarians about their work in, and thinking about, open access in media studies. Fitzpatrick hardly needs an introduction, given her seminal role in a variety of open access and scholarly communication projects. Last year she joined Michigan State as Director of Digital Humanities and Professor of English. Before, she served as Director of Scholarly Communication of the Modern Language Association, where she helped shepherd the open access, open source network Humanities Commons. She co-founded the innovative scholarly communication initiative MediaCommons, and is author of Planned Obsolescence (2011) and The Anxiety of Obsolescence (2006). Follow her thoughts at @kfitz and her website.

Literature and the Right to Be Human

In memory of my beloved mother, Charity Gakure, 1935-2019. Thaayũ. Wherever something stands, something else will stand beside it. Nothing is absolute. —Igbo Proverb I accept Brecht's thesis that in settled periods of history, culture—and literature which is its part, with criticism as its partner—can reflect reality. But that in traumatic times like ours, when reality itself is so distorted as to have become impossible and abnormal, it is the function of all culture, partaking of this abnormality, to be aware of its own sickness. To be aware of the unreality of the unauthenticity of the so called real, is to reinterpret this reality. To reinterpret this reality is to commit oneself to a constant revolutionary assault against it. —Sylvia Wynter, “We Must Learn to Sit Together and Talk about a Little Culture” As I was preparing this address, I struggled with the problem of what Edward Said called beginnings and the complex set of circumstances that they entail: “What must one do to begin? What is special about beginning as an activity or a moment or a place? Can one begin whenever one pleases?” (xv). This challenge can be exacerbated by one's relationship to institutions and their history—in my case, the joy and pain of being both an insider and an outsider, a scholar of Euro-American culture from its margins. And so tonight I find myself in a situation that calls for celebration, but also in a place of uncertainty. I, Simon Gikandi, born in a colonial state of emergency, have had the luck to serve as the 129th president of the Modern Language Association of America. My sense of good fortune is, however, tempered by the reality that the state of emergency that characterized most of the twentieth century, including the circumstances of my own beginnings, has not gone away, as many of us had hoped, but has instead become permanent. Everywhere I go around the world, I keep on hearing echoes of Walter Benjamin's prediction that the state of emergency is “not the exception but the rule” and of his injunction that we must “attain a conception of history that is in keeping with this insight” (257). I find myself in a world where achievement and precarity go hand in hand.

Building a new public idea about Multilingualism

Há quase 20 anos, após os ataques do 11 de setembro e durante sua presidência da Modern Language Association of America, a Latino-americanista Mary Louise Pratt escreveu e publicou um artigo intitulado “Construindo uma Nova Noção Pública sobre Linguagem”. Procurando por um Estados Unidos linguisticamente diverso no novo século XXI, ela questionou: “O que há de errado nesse cenário linguístico?”. A proposição 227 no Estado da Califórnia praticamente eliminou a educação pública bilíngue em 1998, e os jovens que ela encontrou, cujas “vidas produziam profundos incentivos para eles aprenderem e usarem outras línguas [além do Inglês, ...] estavam quase completamente por conta própria” (111) em um país que continuava a receber o apelido de cemeterio de lenguas (ibid.). O lembrete de Pratt aos acadêmicos, de que nós precisávamos construir “uma nova noção sobre linguagem”, foi, de fato, pretendido de forma mais abrangente, conforme ela especificou, para construir uma nova noção sobre “linguagem, aprendizado da linguagem, multilinguismo e cidadania” (112) e “redescobrir [...] os prazeres e dores de ter uma vida multilíngue” em “um país linguisticamente despreparado para apreender sua situação geopolítica” (112).