proper citation type

[AJLinn]

As I'm starting to use Citations more for UAM:EH, I'm wondering about the proper CITATION_TYPE_STATUS for our collections. I've mostly been using "referral" or "basis of illustration" but I think we can improve the definitions and maybe add something more appropriate.

Many times our objects are described in peer-reviewed journals, but we don't use "type" in the same way as biological or even archaeological collections - for the vast majority of our objects, they are unique, one-of-a-kind creations made by individuals. If they are part of a comparative data set described in a paper, they are referenced by catalog number and described for whatever characteristics the author is investigating (e.g., as an example of a typical piece of Tlingit beadwork, a unique example of Yup'ik basketry, or one of many examples of a particular dollmaker, etc.). I'd assume I use "referral" for many, and if it is shown in an image, "basis of illustration".

The definition of "referral" is: "This is the only value acceptable for citing specimens in non-peer reviewed literature." This is not a great definition and is inaccurate for citations of our objects in peer-reviewed articles, but I don't think the others are appropriate.

I'm wondering if we can come up with some less derogatory terms for referencing the use of cultural objects in books (peer-reviewed sometimes), exhibit catalogs (probably not peer-reviewed), academic peer-reviewed articles but uses as illustrations or in the text in the ways described. Maybe I should be using "voucher"?

I'd appreciate any suggestions for this!

[dustymc]

http://arctos.database.museum/info/ctDocumentation.cfm?table=CTCITATION_TYPE_STATUS

I think the categories are:

1) things that mean something in some formal naming system. If there's a piece of Tlingit beadwork that defines Tlingit beadwork (eg, things that are sufficiently different from the reference must be something else) then you use this as well, if that's not how it works then these are probably all irrelevant to your collection.

2) "voucher" for things that don't create formal names, but appear in the "professional" literature. (I think peer review is just a useful proxy to that.) This is most use of most NH collections, and sounds just like what you describe. I don't see any useful distinction between someone looking at 500 items or only one as far as documenting usage goes (and documenting usage is why we expanded this beyond nomenclature).

3) "reference" is "voucher" but with less formality. It's appropriate for anything from newspaper articles to elementary school projects to dissertations (hence the purposefully-vague definition).

4) "erroneous citation," which we hope never gets used again

5) "basis of illustration" and "host voucher" just seem like effective ways to hide vouchers to me.

A difference is that your things are not one THING. Entomologists may send out a gallon of "moths, probably" and get back publication-supported identifications of individuals to subspecies. You may send out 'parka' and get back publication-supported identifications regarding only certain aspects of the item - "Tlingit beadwork" or "Rangifer tarandus" from users who have little interest in the item as a whole. I don't think that changes anything in Citations, but it might mess with our idea that there should be one "current" identification attached to any given specimen.

[AJLinn]

So this one: http://arctos.database.museum/guid/UAM:EH:0554-5446AB Is depicted in the publication _Looking _North__ which I added as a publication. It is depicted as seen here: I cited it as "basis of illustration" and added some of the photo caption in the citation remarks. What would you change about it based on your recommendations here?

[dustymc]

I'd have used "voucher," but that could be because I don't understand something about "basis of illustration." Maybe someone who uses that value can provide a distinction.

UAM@ARCTOS> select guid_prefix, count(*) from collection,cataloged_item,identification,citation where collection.collection_id=cataloged_item.collection_id and cataloged_item.collection_object_id=identification.collection_object_id and identification.identification_id=citation.identification_id and type_status='basis of illustration' group by guid_prefix;

GUID_PREFIX                            COUNT(*)
------------------------------------------------------------ ----------
CHAS:Egg                                  2
UAM:ES                                  655
MVZ:Hild                                  1
UAM:Ento                                  2
CHAS:Mamm                                 3
UAM:EH                                    2
UCM:Herp                                  1
UTEP:ES                                  25
MSB:Mamm                                  3
MVZ:Mamm                                105

10 rows selected.

[AJLinn]

@KatherineLAnderson @DerekSikes any comments on this one?

[DerekSikes]

I'd use voucher.

However, I think the whole 'can't use voucher for non-peer reviewed publications' is strange and makes no sense to me. For example, all the butterflies that were used to make Ken Philip's guide to Alaskan butterflies book (non peer reviewed) are called 'referrals' simply because the book wasn't peer reviewed. I think of them as vouchers.

-Derek

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[dustymc]

Referrals ARE vouchers for non-peer-reviewed publications; they're both "some sort of usage which doesn't attempt anything in taxonomy-land."

The purpose of citations is to link specimens to publications. One purpose of that is to document collection usage. The distinction between voucher and referral exists to allow finer-grained questions of those data, and to avoid needing to decide if an elementary school project or newspaper article or dissertation is "publication-ey" enough for Arctos. (It is, it just goes into a different category of publications.)

Peer review is just a proxy to something like "core-use publications." We could look for a better proxy, or you can just cheat - if you think Ken's book is "sciencey enough" and want to count its usage of specimens closer to "a new species of..." publications in Nature than to a "some kids think wolf skulls are neat" article in the local newspaper, I doubt anyone would object or notice.

"Basis of illustration" looks completely arbitrary to me. It looks like we're using it for (at least) "vaguely visual things," which might include or exclude pictures of karyotypes or measurements taken from 3D scans. Given multiple or arbitrary ways to say the same thing, a user's options are to ignore the "field" entirely or accept that the data represent only someone's subjective choices. We could fix that by merging basis of illustration (and the "host was mentioned" thing) back into voucher, or by defining those terms such that there's a clear distinction.

[Jegelewicz]

I think "basis of illustration" has its place as demonstrating that there is either a digital representation or drawing of the object or part of it in the publication. A "voucher" is simply mentioned without illustration. I don't have any strong feelings about "voucher" referring to mention in a peer-reviewed or not publication, but maybe others do. If so, perhaps the better course is to eliminate "referral" and instead have "voucher, peer reviewed" and "voucher, non-peer reviewed".

[AJLinn]

I think "basis of illustration" has its place as demonstrating that there is either a digital representation or drawing of the object or part of it in the publication.

I agree. For our collections, the visual representation of our collections in publications is a key way that people learn about our objects. I'd like to be able to distinguish between a simple mention and the additional step of illustrating.

[krgomez]

We are currently not yet using citations in Arctos, but wish to begin doing so. I’m wondering if there has been any more thought on this in the last year. The only real reference to this in best practices for art databases that I can find right now is from the Getty Categories for the Description of Works of Art (CDWA): http://www.getty.edu/research/publications/electronic_publications/cdwa/23related.html. The CDWA uses work cited or illustrated. Not sure that these would work. And I’m not sure what would work better than the terms indicated here that we should use (voucher, referral, basis of illustration).

Also, would it be possible to increase the character limit of citation remarks? While we would not always use remarks and don’t plan to copy verbatim text into remarks normally, there would sometimes be cases where this would be helpful. For example, there is a book produced by UAM that includes captions for some individual works in the collection that would be appropriate to include in the catalog record, and it makes the most sense to us to include these captions in citations. In fact, it’s the book Angie referenced above, Looking North. I believe we might want to be able to include a caption of about 2000 characters at most, though the majority of these captions would probably be about 1000.

[Jegelewicz]

@krgomez I created a new issue for the increase in size of remarks. As for the citation types, I think we have all agreed on using voucher, referral and basis of illustration - it's just that no one has updated documentation. I'll assign this to my self, but that doesn't mean I'll get to it soon! If you find that there is a term that will work better for you, just post up a new issue using the Authority Request template.

[krgomez]

Thanks Teresa! We'll go ahead and use these citation types. I have one more comment about it though. We are not crazy about how the citation type appears somewhat prominently below the catalog number on the search results page. I was wondering what the possibilty would be of having it read 1 Citation much like it reads 2 Events ?

[Jegelewicz]

I just put this up for the community to discuss.

[dustymc]

Not sure how to resolve this.

Suggest removing "basis of illustration" and "host voucher," cleaning up documentation for what's left.

[Jegelewicz]

Suggest removing "basis of illustration"

Why? That exactly describes this situation. https://arctos.database.museum/guid/UTEP:ES:1-1102

Where the object was used as a reference for the illustration in the paper.

[dustymc]

Why?

https://github.com/ArctosDB/arctos/issues/1861#issuecomment-449184738

[AJLinn]

Yeah... but, we've been using "basis of illustration" for all of our items depicted in publications. If they're discussed in detail and are part of a detailed analysis, that to me would be more like "referral."

The current definition: "Specimen was figured in a drawing, photograph, or other representation. Does not apply to publications in which the specimen was also designated a taxonomic type status," appears to be exactly as we are using it.

I recommend not removing basis of illustration and closing this issue. Voucher is simply not a term used by cultural collections people, and referral don't seem appropriate either (not really part of our vernacular). As @krgomez pointed out above,

"The CDWA uses work cited or illustrated."

"Basis of illustration" seems the most logical and intuitive terminology, unless we adjust it to be "item illustrated" to be more inclusive of non-artworks. But I'm fine with it as-is.

[dustymc]

to me would be more like "referral."

https://arctos.database.museum/info/ctDocumentation.cfm?table=CTCITATION_TYPE_STATUS#referral

not removing basis of illustration

Can we at least somehow make it clear when it, rather than voucher, is appropriate then? "...or other representation" seems to cover (most of, ish, probably) voucher to me, this seems entirely ambiguous.

[krgomez]

We definitely need some way to cite visual representations of collection items in publications. What about "reproduction" instead of "basis of illustration"? I think that in all cases where we have used "basis of illustration," we have done so to cite photographic reproductions of items in the collections that appear in publications, so it would be accurate and specific.

[AJLinn]

I worry that “reproduction” listed in the search results will imply the item itself is a reproduction! Ugh this is hard… I prefer the suggestion that it shows “citation” in the search results page and we use referral to show the item has been referenced via an image or description. I can learn to accept that term.

[krgomez]

That is very true! It would be incredibly misleading to have "reproduction" appear in the search results, though I think it would work under citations in the catalog record. I'm still confused about how in our disciplines we would distinguish between voucher and referral for citations. Regardless of what we decide to use, can we reopen https://github.com/ArctosDB/arctos/issues/2438 for consideration?

[Jegelewicz]

I think we are OK with what we have? Tentatively closing. @krgomez @AJLinn