Academic referencing for the digital age

I wholeheartedly agree with this argument. In my view, referencing is all about placing your contribution within the relevant academic conversation. I hate articles that provide a list of citations at the end of each sentence, with no page numbers or anything to assist me in understanding why the sentence I've just read is supported by this list of seminal works on the topic. I very much welcome the idea that it should be possible to click on a relevant quote and find that link directly. But I fear that this may encourage the use of secondary citation because the original may not be digitally available.

Here's an example of what may be lost by reliance on secondary citation. My previous post described our search for the 1989 White Paper "Working for Patients". The effort we made to locate the original proved to be very worthwhile. The sentence quoted by Peck was incomplete. He wrote:

"All the non executive directors were to be 'chosen for the contribution they personally can make to the effective management of the hospital'..."

In the context of Peck's article, this is not problematic, although he italicised the word management and did not go on to discuss explicitly the reason for this emphasis.

But the full sentence is:

"All the non-executive directors will be chosen for the contribution they personally can make to the effective management of the hospital and not for any interest group which they might represent."

This contrast between the NED role of representation, traditional in the NHS up to that time, and the new emphasis on management is very salient for our study. And reading the entire White Paper has raised several other questions which we might never have thought of pursuing.

Over the years I have read many articles, student dissertations and funding applications where it has seemed unlikely that the authors have read the original works cited. This has been especially noticeable on the rare occasions when my own work has been cited in a context that is so completely irrelevant that I have gone back to read my original paper to see if I really did say what is claimed! In a future where the effort of referencing is reduced to providing a link, going back to an original which may only be available in hard copy, possibly via the lengthy and costly process of inter library loan, may seem even more of a chore: it will be so much quicker to link to the more recent digital source. We might want to reflect on the implications of this for future scholarship.