Consultant reports and web pages as citable resources -- or not

[Robert Mesibov]

I recently published a paper with 6 colleagues in the CSIRO journal
Invertebrate Systematics. The References section lists 59 works, of which
20 were unpublished reports. The data in those reports were essential for
us to make certain points in our paper.

Our submitted version put the 39 published works in References and the 20
unpublished reports in an Appendix. In the main text and tables, citations
of works in the Appendix were in italics. One referee said the two lists
should be combined, and the editor agreed. The editor asked us to put the
following line in Methods: 'Unpublished reports from which data have been
sourced have been included in the reference list'. We were also asked to
'make sure that all reports include enough information for readers to be
able to obtain the report if they wish'.

Dr Robert Mesibov
Honorary Research Associate
Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery
Home contact: PO Box 101, Penguin, Tasmania, Australia 7316
(03) 64371195; 61 03 64371195