Prepared by Danny Dotson, head of the Geology Library at The Ohio State University and subject librarian.
Per a number of conversations with librarians, teaching faculty, and select others I’ve had lately, I’ve been even more lately craving what I would call a Universal Citation Style that would be used by all publications and publishers. Why? Here are scenarios that explain why the plethora of citation styles is problematic in multiple ways.
Would you like to see a Universal Citation Style? Or do you think there’s a huge reason for having so many options? Share your thoughts.
There might be reasons for different disciplines to have different citation styles, and I’m willing to hear them out. However, as a librarian, especially as a former ILL librarian, it is essential that bibliographic citations be correct and complete so that others can find the cited source. Of course, it’s easy enough nowadays to verify and correct a bad citation using the internet, but scholars still cite older, more obscure sources. I would welcome a universal style for bibliographic citations so that scholars and readers don’t end up wasting precious time and energy on formatting and locating.