Date: Tue, 16 Jul 2002 10:34:20 -0500 (CDT)

There are several different types of publications and it is good to 
have a general understanding on what is which and how they differ.
By understanding these distinctions you will be able to see which is
which when you browse through the bibliography list in papers that you
read.

Please read this *very* carefully and make sure that you understand
the distinctions.

1. Conference proceedings:

	Proceedings contain a collection of papers written by
	many different authors.
	Proceedings are edited by a handful of editors.

	Citation style is:

	Authors, Title, in the Proceedings of ... (Editors), pages, Place
	of Conference, Publisher, Year.

	There are several different formats, but the information
	in the above are all required. 

	For example, it could be:

	Authors, Title, in XXX and YYY, Editors, "The Proceedings of ...",
	ppp--qqq, place, publisher, 2002.


2. Journal articles:

	Journals contain a collection of papers by different authors
	and there are editors who are semi-permanent. 

	Some times there are special issues and domain experts
	are asked to guest edit the issue.

	Journals have volume # and issue #, and page numbers that
	uniquely identify a certain paper.

	Volume# usually increase by 1 each year, and issue usually
	corresponds to the month, but that does not have to be 
	the case. If a special issue is published totally separately,
	it can be assigned a new issue number.

	Citation style is:

	Author, Title, Journal name, Volume(issue):Pages, Year.

	or Volume:Pages.

	That ":" is very crucial because it quickly lets you know that
	it is a journal article.

3. Single author books:

	Books that have author or authors who wrote the whole book.
	For example, "The Origin of Species" by Charles Darwin
	is a single author book. Also, "The Computational Brain"
	by Terrey Sejnowsky and Patricia Churchland is a single
	author book because they wrote the whole book from 
	cover to cover. 

	Single author books differ from edited volumes (see next entry)
	in that the authors wrote the whole book.

	Some single author books are called "monographs". Monographs
	are books that have a very technical content. Many phds publish
	their phd dissertation in the form of monographs later on
	after they graduate.

4. Edited volumes:

	These kinds of books are similar to conference proceedings
	but they originate from different sources.

	For example, a highly focused small workshop may have been
	held by domain experts and they might want to have some kind
	of printed record of their talks. 

	One way for them is to contact a journal and have a special
	issue. Another way is to contact a publisher and get a 
	book out. The latter applies in edited volumes.

	There are several other routes through which an edited
	volume comes to exist. From a symposium, by independently
	contacting domain experts for a contributed paper, etc.

	So, edited volumes usually contain many papers by different
	authors. The editors usually write a summary and introduction
	to the topic in the beginning of the book and this is a very
	good place to start because they provide a nice broad perspective
	on the whole area, and future prospects, etc.

	Citation style:

	Paper Author, Paper Title, in Book Title (Editors), publisher,
	year.
	
	So, if you see books that does not seem to be a 
	proceeding but says "editors", this is what it is.
	
5. Technical reports:

	These are published by academic departments or research labs.
	They have their own numbering scheme, for example, see my 
	publications page.

	Citation style:

	Author, Title, Institution, Department, TechReport number, year.

As an exercise, try finding out what category each reference in my paper

  http://faculty.cs.tamu.edu/choe/ftp/publications/choe.cogsci02.pdf

falls into. If you already know these things, you don't need to do it.

I'll eventually have these info put up in the lab private pages.

Yoonsuck Choe
choe@tamu.edu