JOURNAL OF ARABIC AND ISLAMIC STUDIES
(ISSN: 0806-198X)
RULES FOR CITATION OF
ELECTRONIC/WEB FILES
by Joseph N. Bell
In order to ensure future
access to electronic materials cited by our authors, as well as ease of finding
the parts of such materials referred to, the Journal has established the
following policies. These policies will remain in effect until suitable
alternatives, hopefully reflecting agreed international standards, become
available.
A. PROVISION OF MATERIALS
1. All freely
accessible electronic/Internet files cited by authors, including any links
used, must be be sent in their entirety to the Journal as e-mail attachments or
on disk. Names of all files and links must be kept in the original form.
Shortened MS DOS titles are not allowed, unless these are the original
file names. This means that most of the files in question must be downloaded to
and sent from a machine running on an operating system not limited to MS DOS
file names. For example machines running on Macintosh, UNIX, or Windows 95 or
above should work. Windows 3.x systems cannot be used for this purpose if file
names exceed 8 plus 3 characters (after dot).
2. Images linked to
files do not have to be sent unless they are of particular relevance to the
author's purpose in citing the file.
3. Limited Access Files.
In the case of files with limited access (commercial publications and the
like), the URL or name of the CD and the original name of the file should be
provided, but only the name of the author, the title of the article/book/report
(etc.), and the text immediately referred to need be sent. Files from well
established and widely distributed limited access journals in electronic form
do not have to be sent.
4. Files grouped together
in a single directory/folder should be sent together in a single e-mail, if
possible, and the original name of the directory/folder should be given in the
body of the e-mail message.
5. Authors without access
to machines capable of downloading and sending files with full names and
extensions should keep a record of these and notify the editors care of a.j.metcalfe@lancaster.ac.uk.
6. Files sent by e-mail
should be sent to a.j.metcalfe@lancaster.ac.uk.
B. CITATION OF ELECTRONIC
FILES
For most articles, the
Journal recommends for the citation of printed and manuscript sources the
guidelines given in the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th ed. (
The electronic sources most
often consulted by Journal authors will as a rule be articles and reports on
the Web. For such sources the
- author's name (if known)
- title of document, in quotation marks
- title of complete work (if applicable), in italics
- date of publication or last revision (if known)
- URL, always in full, including final file name, but no longer in brackets, but in roman typeface without underline, separated by commas
- text division (if applicable)
- date of access, in parentheses [no longer required by Chicago, but often useful]. JAIS prefers the inclusion of both publication and access dates.
A reference
to the present file on citations would look like this, if you visited it on
June 2, 2001:
1. Joseph N. Bell, "Rules for Citation of Electronic/Web
Files," Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies, Home Page, 30
May 2001, http://www.uib.no/jais/elec_cit.htm (02 Jun. 2001).
or like
this, assuming the link is to be treated as active in the file:
1. Joseph N. Bell, "Rules for Citation of Electronic/Web
Files," Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies, Home Page, 30
May 2001, http://www.uib.no/jais/elec_cit.htm (02 Jun. 2001).
Special
JAIS Suggestions
An obvious
weakness in most of the citation systems proposed is that they lack the
precision of traditional paper citations. They generally do not go beyond the
end file in the path, and the search capabilities of Internet browsers do not
entirely make up for this. Below we propose how certain types of files may be
cited and provide a number of examples.
1. Adobe Acrobat PDF files,
if paginated, should be cited by URL and page numbers, as with printed
documents. If they are not paginated, they must be cited as HTML (HTM, STM,
etc.) files, as specified below.
3. Postscript (.PS) files
should also be cited by URL and page numbers, as with printed documents.
4. MS Word files, since
they vary according to the platform on which they are read, must be cited not
only by URL but also as unpaginated HTML (HTM, STM, SGML, etc.) files, as
specified below.
5. Paginated HTML (etc.)
files, where the intended pagination is expressly given as part of the text
(for example, as in the JAIS HTML files), should be cited by URL and
page numbers, as with printed documents.
6. Longer unpaginated HTML
(etc.) files should be cited by URL and section and paragraph numbers, if these
are given. If there are no section or paragraph numbers, or the sections or
paragraphs are of great length, the file may be cited by URL and the following
(preceded by a comma):
at ts. [text string] "xxxx."
or
at tss. [text strings] "xxxx" and
"yyyy."
or
from ts. "xxxx" to "yyyy."
or
from tss. "xxxx" to
"yyyy," "xxxx1" to "yyyy1,"
and "xxxx2" to "yyyy2."
where "xxxx" stands for a characteristic string of words (usually 2
to 10) identifying the text section in question and "xxxx" and
"yyyy" stand for characteristic strings of words identifying the
beginning and ending of the text section. Choose strings more or less
precisely at the beginning and end of the passage cited which are are of
sufficient length or sufficiently unusual to make their occurrence earlier in
the text unlikely. Please do not forget to enclose the text strings in
quotation marks. For articles in languages other than English, the precise,
standard equivalent of the expressions "text string" and "text
strings" should be used. Abbreviations must be approved by the editor for
the language in question.
Below are some examples of
acceptable citation forms.
A. For short files only:
1. Jane Doe, "Options and Lack of Options,"
14 Feb. 1996, http://www.website.edu/articles/jdoe_options.html (15 Feb. 2000).
B. For PDF and other paginated files (the
abbreviations "p." and "pp." may be omitted if the
reference can only be to pages):
2. Jane Doe, "Options and Lack of Options,"
14 Feb. 1996, http://www.website.edu/articles/jdoe_options.pdf, pp. 6, 26, 30
(15 Feb. 2000).
C. For unpaginated electronically published books,
long reports, and the like (section, paragraph, article, etc., may be
abbreviated or replaced by appropriate symbols, or another alternative to
section and paragraph might be, for example: chapter 3, at text string
"unusual proliferation of options," as below):
3. Jane Doe, The Theory of Options, June 1998,
http://www.website.edu/books/jdoe_theory.html, section 1, paragraph 2 (15
Feb. 2000).
4. Jane Doe, "Report on Options," 14 Feb.
1996, http://www.website.edu/reports/jdoe_options.html, 1.5.2 (15 Feb. 2000).
D. For long unpaginated files lacking or with widely
separated text divisions:
5. Jane Doe, "Options and Lack of Options,"
14 Feb. 1996, http://www.website.edu/articles/jdoe_options.htm, at ts.
"John's new red house" (15 Feb. 2000).
6. Jane Doe, "Options and Lack of Options,"
14 Feb. 1996, http://www.website.edu/articles/jdoe_options.html, from tss.
"John's new reed house" to "by the
Last
modified October 23, 2007.
