{"action":"created","issue":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/force11/force11-scwg/issues/131","repository_url":"https://api.github.com/repos/force11/force11-scwg","labels_url":"https://api.github.com/repos/force11/force11-scwg/issues/131/labels{/name}","comments_url":"https://api.github.com/repos/force11/force11-scwg/issues/131/comments","events_url":"https://api.github.com/repos/force11/force11-scwg/issues/131/events","html_url":"https://github.com/force11/force11-scwg/issues/131","id":148985262,"number":131,"title":"Principles should emphasize the need for a better way than citations to manage academic credit","user":{"login":"cboettig","id":222586,"avatar_url":"https://avatars.githubusercontent.com/u/222586?v=3","gravatar_id":"","url":"https://api.github.com/users/cboettig","html_url":"https://github.com/cboettig","followers_url":"https://api.github.com/users/cboettig/followers","following_url":"https://api.github.com/users/cboettig/following{/other_user}","gists_url":"https://api.github.com/users/cboettig/gists{/gist_id}","starred_url":"https://api.github.com/users/cboettig/starred{/owner}{/repo}","subscriptions_url":"https://api.github.com/users/cboettig/subscriptions","organizations_url":"https://api.github.com/users/cboettig/orgs","repos_url":"https://api.github.com/users/cboettig/repos","events_url":"https://api.github.com/users/cboettig/events{/privacy}","received_events_url":"https://api.github.com/users/cboettig/received_events","type":"User","site_admin":false},"labels":[],"state":"open","locked":false,"assignee":null,"milestone":null,"comments":2,"created_at":"2016-04-17T19:24:21Z","updated_at":"2016-04-18T15:37:43Z","closed_at":null,"body":"The current wording risks leaving the take-home as \"All our issues with citation, credit, and reproducibility of software can be adequately addressed within the current model of academic citation practices.\"  We dismiss problems where the desire of credit conflict with the desire to track provenance by saying \"that's a problem for academic citation in general, so to the extent that citation still fulfils both roles for papers, it can do so for data as well.\"\r\n\r\nI fear this misses the orders of magnitude difference between how these problems manifest in software vs how they are dealt with in papers.  The quirks of citation practices which have been manageable in papers are exacerbated to a degree in which they may no longer be manageable.  \r\n\r\nFor instance: Both citations to both software and papers can suffer the 'wrapper problem' -- citing a review paper acknowledges the provenance of ideas but fails to allocate credit (citation count) to the originators.  Likewise citing a software client library acknowledges the provenance through it's dependency on the sever software system, but fails to transfer credit to it.  The difference is one of scale -- a closely knit research community can self-police a glaring omission of credit if an author cites a textbook in place of a citation classic of the field.  A reviewer is far less likely to be familiar with the original sources and underlying dependencies when they encounter a citation to a software wrapper around an existing algorithm or software system. \r\n\r\nBoth software and papers share a tension in citing for provenance and citing for credit, but software has this issue in spades.  Provenance means fine-grained citation to particular version, credit means accumulating those citations against a single object.  Thin wrappers around fundamental dependencies are commonplace.  Authorship concepts are both more diverse and less governed by well-understood norms.\r\n\r\nWhile we strive to offer practical guidelines that acknowledge the current incentive system of academic citation, a more modern system of assigning credit is sorely needed.  It is not that academic software needs a separate system from academic papers, but that it underscores the need to overhaul the system of credit for both.  \r\n\r\n\r\n-----\r\n\r\nAs discussed in the workshop, I'm working on a pull request along these lines, but comments & references welcome here."},"comment":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/force11/force11-scwg/issues/comments/211435954","html_url":"https://github.com/force11/force11-scwg/issues/131#issuecomment-211435954","issue_url":"https://api.github.com/repos/force11/force11-scwg/issues/131","id":211435954,"user":{"login":"mfenner","id":23151,"avatar_url":"https://avatars.githubusercontent.com/u/23151?v=3","gravatar_id":"","url":"https://api.github.com/users/mfenner","html_url":"https://github.com/mfenner","followers_url":"https://api.github.com/users/mfenner/followers","following_url":"https://api.github.com/users/mfenner/following{/other_user}","gists_url":"https://api.github.com/users/mfenner/gists{/gist_id}","starred_url":"https://api.github.com/users/mfenner/starred{/owner}{/repo}","subscriptions_url":"https://api.github.com/users/mfenner/subscriptions","organizations_url":"https://api.github.com/users/mfenner/orgs","repos_url":"https://api.github.com/users/mfenner/repos","events_url":"https://api.github.com/users/mfenner/events{/privacy}","received_events_url":"https://api.github.com/users/mfenner/received_events","type":"User","site_admin":false},"created_at":"2016-04-18T15:37:43Z","updated_at":"2016-04-18T15:37:43Z","body":"While I agree 100% with what @cboettig said, I worry that this is out of scope for the document. Maybe a paragraph explaining that citation in the scholarly literature is only part (even if currently a big part) of the academic credit system. But leave the more detailed discussion for another paper."}}