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R Citation through time

6 messages · Gregor Gorjanc, Ioannis Dimakos, Friedrich Leisch

Original
Gregor Gorjanc
# 
Hello!

I keep my local bib file and up to now I had entry

  @Manual{R:2003,
    title = {R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing},
    author = {{R Development Core Team}},
    organization = {R Foundation for Statistical Computing},
    address = {Vienna, Austria},
    year = {2005},
    note = {{ISBN} 3-900051-00-3},
    url = {http://www.R-project.org},
  }

With recent versions ISBN changed to 3-900051-07-0. Now I wonder if
there is any canonical way to refer to R without the need to change R
entry over and over. It would probably be the best just to add new entry
for "new version" for R. Now the question is what is new version or when
does ISBN number change?

Thanks.
Friedrich Leisch
# 
> Hello!
  > I keep my local bib file and up to now I had entry

  >   @Manual{R:2003,
  >     title = {R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing},
  >     author = {{R Development Core Team}},
  >     organization = {R Foundation for Statistical Computing},
  >     address = {Vienna, Austria},
  >     year = {2005},
  >     note = {{ISBN} 3-900051-00-3},
  >     url = {http://www.R-project.org},
  >   }

  > With recent versions ISBN changed to 3-900051-07-0.

It changed with 2.0.0, which is not that recent ...

  > Now I wonder if there is any canonical way to refer to R without
  > the need to change R entry over and over. It would probably be the
  > best just to add new entry for "new version" for R. Now the
  > question is what is new version or when does ISBN number change?

The ISBN changes with every major version of R, i.e., it will change
next when 3.0.0 is released. We are already stretching the ISBN rules
to the limit (on the no-change-side) with that policy, and the
reason is exactly to make the reference more stable. But with a major
release we really need to assign a new ISBN.

Best,
Fritz
Gregor Gorjanc
#
Friedrich Leisch wrote:
Thank you for this clarifications. As indicated ISBN is not changing
very often and I can live with couple of BibTeX entries for R.

Thanks!
Ioannis Dimakos
# 
Forgive me for being naive,

but I have not seen any reference where the ISBN was required.  The apa
style that I use does not require the ISBN.

Best,

Ioannis

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On Tue, Sep 12, 2006 16:22, Gregor Gorjanc wrote:

  
    

      
      
    

  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      Gregor Gorjanc
    

    

      
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Ioannis Dimakos wrote:

            

      
      
      
    

        
You can put that part in note field as it is done in output of
citation() function.

  
    

      
      
    

  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      Friedrich Leisch
    

    

      
      #
    

  


  

          

      
      
      
    

        
> Forgive me for being naive,
  > but I have not seen any reference where the ISBN was required.  The apa
  > style that I use does not require the ISBN.

It is not required for most citation *styles*. The main reason that we
assigned an ISBN to R is that some
people/journals/departments/... think that software cannot or should
not be cited, and in that cases it often helps to have an ISBN,
because it "looks more official". And the ISBN rules explicitly state
that software should get an ISBN for full references.

Best,
Fritz