Talk:Radial immunodiffusion

Comments by IP

Can someone post a description of this assay in a clear, concise manner? Because what exists on the article right now are just a compilation of semi-coherent sentences with no rhyme or reason. And yes, I have done SRID before.

101.10.65.240 (talk) 08:42, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

RFC: Should this article include information about journal publishers, locations, issn, LCCNs, OCLCs, etc...

Should this article include information about journal publishers, locations, issn, LCCNs, OCLCs, etc... Compare without and with. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 07:46, 18 June 2021 (UTC)

Discussion

• No This information is overwhelming clutter, and is detrimental to the reader. That the Journal of Immunology is published by a company based in Baltimore, or that the Library of Congress catalogues it as LCCN sf85-7036 help no reader find the article "Quantitative determination of serum immunoglobulins in antibody–agar plates" by Fahey and McKelvey. This is covered by the other identifiers for the article, like PMID 14253527. The publisher is also wrong, in 1965, the published for that journal was Williams & Wilkins, not American Association of Immunologists (who became the publisher in 1982). This is why no style guide out there (Chicago, Oxford, etc...) includes that information in their recommendation for journal citations. We have articles for these journal, anyone curious about who publishers them and what their catalog numbers are can check out those articles. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 07:46, 18 June 2021 (UTC)
• No. A citation should be sufficient to help a reader who wants to find the cited reference ensure that they find the correct one, but I think the references without all the extraneous information already do that and it clutters them up. That said, I did notice this edit: [1]. While we have to be careful not to link to any copyright violations, if there is a legitimate full-text version of the article available, we should include that either in place of or in addition to the abstract. That is not clutter; that is genuinely helping the reader to actually be able to find and access the source material. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 23:39, 18 June 2021 (UTC)

@Seraphimblade: This preserves the link, it's one just that's to a slightly different landing page. Normally one with an HTML version of the page, although one isn't available in this specific instance. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 23:47, 18 June 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, that makes sense. As long as it's reasonably accessible from the reference, I don't think the exact means of doing so is terribly important. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 00:17, 19 June 2021 (UTC)

• Yes. This article uses the Cite journal template when identifying journals as sources. The Notes section in the page for that template states: "Although it may appear redundant to include multiple ids for articles, it is helpful for many editors who only have access to a certain resource."

The inclusion of multiple identifiers (ids) in a citation to a journal article helps editors and readers because:

• The PubMed identifier (PMID) links to a page that identifies a journal article's title and authors, but does not identify the publisher of the journal or the location of the publisher. The page may or may not contain an abstract of an article and a link to the full article.
• The WorldCat id (OCLC) often (but not always) links to a page that identifies the journal's name, publisher and the publisher's location. The page often lists the libraries or on-line sources that carry the journal (although not always the sources that carry the article of interest). The page also identifies and links to the journal's ISSN.
• The Library of Congress Control Number (LCCN) links to a page that identifies the name, publisher, the location of the publisher and the ISSN of a journal. The page also contains other helpful information about the journal that are absent in pages to which other ids link.
• The International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) is used to uniquely identify a serial publication, such as a journal or magazine. The ISSN is especially helpful in distinguishing between serials with the same title. The ISSN is a persistent identifier that is a long-lasting reference to a serial publication. The ISSN links to an OCLC page that is not always the same as the one to which the journal's name links.
• The Digital object identifier (DOI) is a persistent identifier for an individual journal article. The DOI only contains direct links to articles or pages in articles that publishers have agreed to make available to the public without charge. The DOI does not contain links to archived articles that are no longer freely available to the public because the publisher or the publisher's policy has changed (even where the archived article remains available to the public without charge through other sources). Many older journal articles do not yet have a DOI.

Each of the above ids have features that the other ids may lack. Readers or editors may want to quickly access each such feature.

Contrary to a statement made above ("We have articles for these journal, anyone curious about who publishers them and what their catalog numbers are can check out those articles.") that cites PMID 14253527, there are no free links to an on-line copy of the article that the PMID describes. A link in PMID 14253527 provides access to an abstract of the article, but not to the full article because of copyright restrictions. Neither the PMID nor any link within it identifies the article's publisher or the publisher's location. There is presently no DOI for the article, which was published in 1965. LCCN 52-52893 and OCLC 802743767 identify the journal's publisher (Williams & Wilkins) and the publisher's location (Baltimore). The OCLC also identifies the author of the journal (American Association of Immunologists), but neither the LCCN nor the OCLS provide any information about the article. To obtain a copy of the full article, a reader must either purchase an on-line copy, have access to a source that provides free on-line copies, or obtain a printed copy from a library.

Contrary to another statement made above, the location of the publisher of an article is important. The governments of some nations have censored or rewritten scientific articles or have prohibited their publication for political reasons. Readers therefore have a need to know the location of the publisher of each cited article without first obtaining a copy of the article, especially when they may need to pay to obtain the copy.

Some of the publishers that citations to journal articles in Radial immunodiffusion identify are scientific societies or associations. Identifying the publishers of such articles assures the reader that the article bears a scientific organization's imprimatur. While there is no such assurance for other publishers, if one or more citations on a Wikipedia page identify a scientific society as the publisher, all other citations on that page should also identify the publisher to provide consistency within the page.

From an editorial standpoint, the citations in Radial immunodiffusion are within lists of "Notes" or "References", rather than within the article's text. They therefore provide helpful information without cluttering the text. Corker1 (talk) 03:11, 2 November 2021 (UTC)