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Re: st: how to cite Stata helpfile


From   Jet <[email protected]>
To   [email protected]
Subject   Re: st: how to cite Stata helpfile
Date   Tue, 8 Nov 2011 14:20:25 -0500

Thanks a lot to all three of you!

On Tue, Nov 8, 2011 at 12:34 PM, Nick Cox <[email protected]> wrote:
> Indeed. Standards, or perhaps rather styles, vary enormously. There are fields in which reproducible research is the norm and work is not publishable without a script that would re-generate the whole of the results from the whole of the original data as received _and elsewhere available_. There are fields that say nothing about the computing and in which even some minimal statement such as "the data were carefully edited" lifts the competent researcher above many others.
>
> But this is difficult. When I am a consumer of literature, I also don't want to see papers bloated with lots of minor details.  What next, that you acknowledge your mailer? In the end, as usual, people have to use their judgement. I did say "important" and there is always a grey area around that.
>
> Nick
> [email protected]
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Richard Williams
> Sent: 08 November 2011 16:58
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: RE: st: how to cite Stata helpfile
>
> At 11:21 AM 11/8/2011, Nick Cox wrote:
>>I disagree to some extent with Richard's recommendations,
>>particularly on what he calls "utilities".
>
> Fair enough. Perhaps it would be a good practice to include a
> footnote or acknowledgement like "Several user-written Stata routines
> were employed in this analysis. These include XXX (Cox, 2009); XXX
> (Baum, 2007)." Authors can help their cause by explicitly saying in
> the help file that they expect citations and show how the work should
> be cited. If the editor wants to kill the citations, well, at least
> you've tried.
>
> Incidentally, articles often don't even say what major package was
> used (e.g. Stata, SAS, SPSS) let alone the specific programs. I
> usually harass authors to provide such details and to make their data
> and code available if at all possible. I also tell people that if you
> have written some sort of Stata program, you'll probably have a lot
> more impact and get a lot more citations if you provide the software
> so people can do it themselves rather than have to figure out how to
> program from scratch.
>
>>If anybody's published work, meaning work made public, was important
>>to you in work with Stata that you in turn want to publish, then you
>>have a moral obligation to cite it.
>>
>>Second-guessing how useful a citation might be to the original
>>author is scarcely the point. Citations that don't help a career
>>much don't do much harm either.
>>
>>Also, it so happens that many papers in many fields include little
>>or nothing on the data management that lay behind the analysis, and
>>so there is often not a section where citations would be
>>appropriate, but that is an empirical question, not a matter of principle.
>>
>>Also, whether reviewers or editors of certain journals will accept
>>citations to programs alone can be a tricky question, but authors
>>are surely honour-bound to try to cite others' work responsibly and fully.
>>
>>There is a bizarre confusion in some quarters between "making freely
>>available", which many people do in the Stata community, and
>>"relinquishing intellectual property rights", a different matter altogether.
>>
>>Nick
>>[email protected]
>>
>>Richard Williams
>>
>>At 03:05 PM 11/7/2011, Jet wrote:
>> >HI, how to cite a Stata helpfile (e.g., betafit) if needed? Wonder if
>> >there is any suggested way to do so. Thanks!
>>
>>The Stata 12 User's Guide says
>>
>>The suggested citation for this software is
>>StataCorp. 2011. Stata: Release 12. Statistical Software. College
>>Station, TX: StataCorp LP.
>>
>>For a built in command, I suppose you could also cite the appropriate
>>reference manual. I would especially do that if I was directly
>>quoting from the manual. The manual usually has the same text as the
>>help file, and more.
>>
>>For a user-written command --
>>
>>I would suggest seeing if the help file includes a suggested
>>citation. If you  are using one of my programs, my strong preference
>>is that you cite one of my published articles, assuming I have
>>written a relevant article for the command.
>>
>>Barring that, or in addition to, you might try citing the repec
>>pages. For example, the user-written ivreg2 help file makes this suggestion:
>>
>>---------------
>>ivreg2 is not an official Stata command. It is a free contribution to
>>the research community, like a paper. Please cite it as such:
>>
>>      Baum, C.F., Schaffer, M.E., Stillman, S. 2010.  ivreg2: Stata
>>module for extended instrumental variables/2SLS, GMM and AC/HAC, LIML
>>and k-class regression. http://ideas.repec.org/c/boc/bocode/s425401.html
>>---------------
>>
>>As to when to cite - my own feeling is that if you are using a
>>user-written estimation command, you should cite the authors of that
>>command. Utilities, probably not, unless they had a really major
>>impact on the analysis. If you do feel a deep debt of gratitude for
>>some utilities, perhaps those authors could be mentioned in the
>>acknowledgments instead. Citations of published work are what is
>>going to help most scholars the most, but other types of appreciation
>>are nice as well.
>>
>>
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>
> -------------------------------------------
> Richard Williams, Notre Dame Dept of Sociology
> OFFICE: (574)631-6668, (574)631-6463
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> WWW:    http://www.nd.edu/~rwilliam
>
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