I guess it's an ancient discussion about which style of mentioning references in text ([1] or [Doe, 1998]) is preferable.
I grew up with the shorter, numeric style, and I prefer it because it improves readability for me. When I objected to the more verbose style some time ago, a good argument was presented to me, though — after some time in the field, one doesn't have to look up the exact reference at the end of the paper, because they will know what important thing John Doe wrote in 1998. But I'm now reviewing a paper that refers to a couple of Web Services specifications as [Don, 2003] and [Keith, 2004]. I think the authors come from a place where the usual order or first name, last name doesn't hold, but it's still so funny. Feels like we researchers in Web Services can just use the first names, because we are such a friendly community. 8-)
BTW, I believe I've briefly met both Don Box and Keith Ballinger, and I found them friendly enough. 8-)
Posted at 2042 on Fri, Aug 12, 2005 in category Work | TrackBack