Lat night our old friend Charles Paxton wrote the following message on the Frontiers of Zoology Usenet e-mail group:
"Hi Dale et al.,
I have found Dale's list of cryptids on the cfz cite interesting but again I would STRONGLY urge everyone to publish the list in such a way that it can be cited in a journal book or something else. Most blogs are ephemeral and difficult - if not impossible - to cite, thus rendering articles frankly unusable to the serious researcher. This is a shame so please, please, please formally publish material... an obvious location for more speculative articles would be the the CFZ's own journal "Animals and Men" or in their yearbook. This would also offer authors the opportunity to improve the articles by giving them proper bibliographical treatment. Please don't publish stuff on blogs unless it is somewhat informal fun stuff; perhaps transient news, opinion, or you intend to ultimately publish it in book form (and that is a realistic option rather than a pipe dream).
Publish articles in such a way that they can be properly cited. Original thoughts and analysis in the scientific field should not be placed on blogs but in journals and books. I say this as someone who is publishing papers on cz topics in the scientific literature and needs to cite source material correctly. Help me to help you get proper credit for your work."
Charles, I agree with you totally. We intend to continue publishing both Animals & Men, The Amateur Naturalist and The CFZ Yearbook, and we will hopefully be publishing Dale's Checklist in full in one of these; however, the most telling of Charles's statements here is "Please don't publish stuff on blogs unless it is somewhat informal fun stuff; perhaps transient news, opinion, or you intend to ultimately publish it in book form (and that is a realistic option rather than a pipe dream). " I will continue to publish stuff of substance on the blog because, in our opinion, the internet is crass and ephemeral enough already. The whole point of the CFZ is to mix serious research with fun and the bloggo will continue to reflect that.
However, we shall always publish serious research papers in one of our conventional, hard-copy journals, so we will continue to do what the CFZ do best - having our cake and eating it.
Did I hear someone say cake?
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citing internet sources, including blogs is acceptable in academic work. I cannot really see why it should be a problem,unless the blogs disappear In citing the site(unties tongue) you put the date accessed and even some put a time, so it can be verified.
Some people only publish on the internet or in e book form. If anyone needs it I can put an example up on how to cite internet sources.
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