A reader writes:
Dear Mo,
I want to quote your Brain in a Nutshell Essay. Can you please provide me some bibliographic data of this essay. I don't want to cite just Mo and a short-lived URL.
I was flattered to get this email, but I wasn't sure how to respond. I suggested something along these lines:
- Costandi, M. (2007). The Brain in a Nutshell. Neurophilosophy Weblog. Retrieved on September 26, 2007, from http://scienceblogs.com/
neurophilosophy/2007/08/the_brain_in_a_nutshell.php
As luck would have it, the second edition of Citing Medicine: The NLM Style Guide for Authors, Editors, and Publishers, which has just been published by the National Institutes of Health, includes a section on how to cite blogs, and provides some examples.
Comments
NLM? Don't you mean MLA?
Posted by: NLM | October 14, 2007 11:38 AM
For example, there are different citation styles for "homepages", "parts of a website", blogs, and wikis, there's no mention of DOIs, and there's no way of handling the fact that some cited works on the web can change without changing their URL.
I don't think the person who developed the guidelines even knows what a blog is, as they categorize it under "Email and discussion forums" instead of in the Websites category.
Posted by: Mr. Gunn | October 15, 2007 2:28 AM
Yeah...my example was better.
Posted by: Mo | October 15, 2007 5:29 PM