Full citations ... on every page of a research report

chmcgee,

So how many times have you seen a page of a research report posted online, or a snippet from a page, and the source citation for the abstract or the set of assertions is, say, "OB2:329"—and you're left wondering  what that source actually is?

With a published paper, article, or book, in the final editing process, we convert full citations to short citations to save space and to avoid tedious repetition. A research report is a different entity. It’s a technical paper. Saving space isn’t at the top of one’s list when creating a technical paper.

In the distant past—say, typewriter days—we conducted research, made notes in a notebook or on notecards and, at the end of our research, sat down and wrote a report.

Today, a research report is more often a work-in-progress, created on an "as-you-go" basis throughout the research process. We begin our research report before any work is done at all. We record the essential background information for this research project. We analyze the research problem, define the goal, and identify the resources to be used. Then when we begin the actual research, online or onsite, we consult each source and record the results. It may be a negative finding (which requires a citation to what we used that didn’t produce results) or an actual record (which requires at least an abstract). Both often require an analytical comment about the record set or the circumstances in the record.

In this research process, we typically don't just add new stuff at the end of what we've just typed. Typically, our report will have some organizational scheme. We may group land records together, court records together, and tax records together. If we’re doing contextual research, we may group material about legislative acts separately from research about a political event. Or we may arrange our findings in chronological sequence. Once we're done, we may decide to reorganize or move passages for a clearer presentation.

If, in the process of creating that report, we follow the style of published works and create a full citation at first use and then shortened citations thereafter, we’ll end up with many short citations coming before the full citation. Then citations have to be rejiggered, which means we risk creating errors. If, in creating that research report, we resort to using that wonderful little word ibid., to avoid replicating a full citation that we had just used for the last record, then rearranging our data or adding new material into the report at an earlier point will leave us with citations don't match the assertions to which they are attached.

Today, using word-processing software, we can use that wonderful feature caleld cut-and-paste to replicate a full citation for every abstract or transcript or source discussion that we make. Using it takes little more time than typing ibid.  Using it avoids setting ourselves up for errors as we rework that research report.

Yes, at the end of our research, when we finalize the report, we could go back and convert all the full citations to short citations. If we’re doing client work, we may logically ask whether that is the best use of client funds. If we’re doing this research report for a project of our own, we still might ask what is more essential: saving space or saving time.

In either event, we have to consider: when a user of our report decides to post a page of it online, Will our abbreviated citations on that page be self-explanatory?  Yes, that same issue exists when a page of a published work is put online with shortened (incomplete) source citations or those cryptic ones such as OR 37/168/295. But, with published work, we can always locate the publication and study it to identify the full source. With research reports and other unpublished technical papers, finding the full paper can be a challenge.