How to Reference Material in the HyperGuide

General considerations

The LAC HyperGuide is a scientific text, and as such it and its parts qualify for inclusion in the reference list of a journal or conference article under the same conditions as a conventional text. This requires a precise definition of the author and the publisher for the LAC HyperGuide or a part of it. The definition of how to extend the concept of a publisher to the case of the LAC HyperGuide can be found in [reading/publisher]. The present division contains the additional definitions of the concept of authorship in the context of the hyperguide, and a suggstion for how to formulate a reference.

The LAC HyperGuide consists of a large number of segments, each of which is represented as an HTML file or a postscript file. Some of the segments are articles, also called referencable segments, which means that they have the following properties:

• A coherent set of contents which are suitable for continuous reading. By contrast, a list of references to other sections does not count as an article.
• Identifiable author(s).
• The contents have a reasonable persistence over time. An article does not change every couple of days.
• The access path within the hyperguide is likewise going to be retained. If one inspects the contents of that address, even in a more distant future, one shall be able to find out what have been its successive contents over time, even if the address is not then in active use.

Non-article segments are used for the following purposes:

• Overviews, lists of various kinds of entities, and links to substructures.
• Administrative information about the hyperguide (how the structure is organized, the copyright notice, etc).
• Segments which contain excerpts of results which have been published previously, for example a set of definitions, or a theorem with its proof. In such cases it does not make sense to assign individual referencability to the segment.

The following general principles are therefore appropriate:

• Articles are referenced by analogy with articles in "collection" volumes, that is, by specifying the author and the title of the hyperguide article, together with a phrase saying that it appeared in the present hyperguide, and its position (access path) there.
• Results that are mentioned in "excerpt" type segments should appear with a reference to the original publication that the excerpt is based on. As a general rule, each excerpt contains that information, either at the end of the excerpt itself, or (in the case of postscript formatted excerpt segments) sometimes in the corresponding header page. Only in exceptional cases (for example if the excerpt itself is cited as an example of a particular phenomenon, or if it is claimed that the excerpt is incorrect) is it meaningful to refer to the excerpt segment itself.
• Other non-referencable segments, as well as the hyperguide as a whole, are referenced by specifying the hyperguide's official network address.

The following recommendations realize these general principles. We distinguish between the case where the reference is from another hyperdocument within the WWW, and the case where the reference is from a conventional article, in particular one which is published with conventional printing (conventional journal, conference proceedings, or technical report).

References from another structure within the WWW

From running text, the hyperguide should be referred to as the LAC HyperGuide, where the underlined phrase represents a link to http://vir.liu.se/hg-lac/. As explained in [reading/publisher], this URL is intended to persist for all foreseeable future. Substructures within the hyperguide can be further qualified by indicating their access path, which is found in the header of each segment within the hyperguide. For example, the present document may be referred to as "the reading segment of the LAC HyperGuide", where the underlined phrase represents a link either to http://vir.liu.se/hg-lac/reading/ or to http://vir.liu.se/hg-lac/ as a whole. Notice, in particular that access paths to non-referencable segments are not guaranteed to persist, so in such cases it may be better to use the shorter URL, and to refer to the hyperguide as a whole.

If a conventional list of references is made e.g. at the end of the article, then we recommend to use the same format as for references from conventional articles. This is always advisable for references to hyperguide articles, since for them it is appropriate to include the title and the author(s) of the artcile.

References from a conventional article

Conventional, paper-oriented articles contain a list of references at the end. We propose that references to hyperguide articles should be put on the format that is illustrated by the following example:

Sven Svensson: Introduction to Logics of Actions and Change. In The LAC HyperGuide, http://vir.liu.se/hg-lac/scope/v1, September 1995.

Notice that the URL address contains information both about access to the hyperguide as a whole (by the address "http://vir.liu.se/hg-lac"), and about the access path within the hyperguide (in this case, "/scope/"). The first part corresponds to the conventional information about the name and the city of the publisher; the second part corresponds to the conventional information as to page number(s) in a e.g. a journal or an article collection.

The information that goes into such a reference is found at the top of the article in question. In the present example, the article may have had the following head:

Introduction to Logics of Actions and Change

This segment's status of article is indicated in several ways: the use of the word "Cite:", the larger font (level 1 in HTML) for the heading, and the indication of authorship. Compare with the top of the present division ("How to Reference the HyperGuide") where the word "Cite:" does not appear, a smaller font (level 2 in HTML) is used for the heading, and there is no mention of authorship.

The last part of the access path, "v1" in the example, specifies the version number of the article in question. Version numbers are always used for articles, but rarely for non-article segments. If one accesses the same path without the version number, one obtains the current version, and an option for seeing the list of all earlier versions together with their month of appearance. Thus it is possible to recover the version-number information from the month and year information.

References to non-article segments or to the LAC HyperGuide as a whole should have the following form:

Erik Sandewall (ed): The LAC HyperGuide, http://vir.liu.se/hg/lac/, version of September 1995.

with appropriate choice of date for the version.