Adrian, Responses inline On Tue, Oct 6, 2015 at 1:58 PM, Adrian Du?a <dusa.adrian at unibuc.ro> wrote:> Hi Gabriel, > > On Tue, Oct 6, 2015 at 10:59 PM, Gabriel Becker <gmbecker at ucdavis.edu> > wrote: > >> [...] >> >> At the very least, this is seems to be a flagrant violation of the >> *spirit* of the CRAN policy, which AFAIK is intended to enforce >> acknowledgement of the contributions of all copyright holders in the >> package. The fact that you are trying to bypass the policy by suggesting >> users use an unofficial citation which would not comply with the policy >> while maintaining an official one which complies, but which you don't want >> users to see is probably a suggestion that you shouldn't do that. >> > > > But that is the very point: I read the CRAN policies twice, and there is > no official guideline on how to compile the citation. > Regarding the Source packages, the policies mention: >> ###### > The ownership of copyright and intellectual property rights of all > components of the package must be clear and unambiguous (including from the > authors specification in the DESCRIPTION file). Where code is copied (or > derived) from the work of others (including from R itself), care must be > taken that any copyright/license statements are preserved and authorship is > not misrepresented. > Preferably, an ?Authors at R? would be used with ?ctb? roles for the authors > of such code. Alternatively, the ?Author? field should list these authors > as contributors. > > Where copyrights are held by an entity other than the package authors, > this should preferably be indicated via ?cph? roles in the ?Authors at R? > field, or using a ?Copyright? field (if necessary referring to an > inst/COPYRIGHTS file). > > Trademarks must be respected. > ###### > > Now, that requirement is already met: the former author is still in the > authors' list. So the contribution of the former author is duly > acknowledged, but the fundamental issue of my question related to the > citation file, for which the CRAN policies doesn't offer any other > information. >The citation mechanism, AFAIK, has two purposes. One is to associate a published article/book/etc with an r package, where appropriate (and there authorship and inclusion would need to meet the requirements of the publishing journal). The other is to give a way for other works to cite the work done in developing the package. If you don't acknowledge that it is "heavily implied" that in the second case all authors of the package should appear in the citation (this is almost definitionally true of citations, I would think) I'm not really sure what to tell you. Approached from a different angle, what reason do you have for wanting the other other to not appear in the citation for the package other than minimizing/not acknowledging the copyright-holding work that he or she did on the project?> > If the spirit of the CRAN policies is to enforce citing each and every one > of the authors, then I don't understand why the citation from package Rcmdr > meets this spirit, while my suggestion doesn't. >I don't have any knowledge of what Rcmdr does with regards to the citations or the historical context that would make it relevant to the discussion here.> > I apologize for pushing this topic to the limit, but I haven't got an > answer to this question yet... >With respect, not receiving the answer you wanted isn't the same as not receiving an answer. Best, ~G> > Best wishes, > Adrian > > PS: @Thierry: I did take a look at RODBC, but the citation information is > generated automatically upon package installation (no other special file on > CRAN) > > -- > Adrian Dusa > University of Bucharest > Romanian Social Data Archive > Soseaua Panduri nr.90 > 050663 Bucharest sector 5 > Romania >-- Gabriel Becker, PhD Computational Biologist Bioinformatics and Computational Biology Genentech, Inc. [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
Dear Gabriel, On Wed, Oct 7, 2015 at 12:39 AM, Gabriel Becker <gmbecker at ucdavis.edu> wrote:> [...] > >> >> I apologize for pushing this topic to the limit, but I haven't got an >> answer to this question yet... >> > > With respect, not receiving the answer you wanted isn't the same as not > receiving an answer. >I very much appreciate your patience with me, and I am grateful for it. The question is I believe very important, for I would like to avoid submitting a new version of the package only to be told that I did something wrong. As so many other packages seem to have a lot of flexibility in compiling the citation file, what I am inquiring is: will I be prosecuted for submitting a new version which doesn't include all the authors in the citation file, especially since the other author is no longer contributing? (let's say I will provide a single author, published journal article, referring specifically to this package). The work of the other author is duly acknowledged in his position in the authors' list. As I previously wrote, citing Dusa and Other (2015) implies equal citation rights for unequal work, a thing that I am uncomfortable with. There is a huge amount of work being involved in this subsequent version, to which the former author didn't contribute anything at all... Best wishes, Adrian -- Adrian Dusa University of Bucharest Romanian Social Data Archive Soseaua Panduri nr.90 050663 Bucharest sector 5 Romania [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
On Tue, Oct 6, 2015 at 2:52 PM, Adrian Du?a <dusa.adrian at unibuc.ro> wrote:> Dear Gabriel, > > On Wed, Oct 7, 2015 at 12:39 AM, Gabriel Becker <gmbecker at ucdavis.edu> > wrote: > >> [...] >> >>> >>> I apologize for pushing this topic to the limit, but I haven't got an >>> answer to this question yet... >>> >> >> With respect, not receiving the answer you wanted isn't the same as not >> receiving an answer. >> > > I very much appreciate your patience with me, and I am grateful for it. > The question is I believe very important, for I would like to avoid > submitting a new version of the package only to be told that I did > something wrong. > > As so many other packages seem to have a lot of flexibility in compiling > the citation file, what I am inquiring is: will I be prosecuted for > submitting a new version which doesn't include all the authors in the > citation file, especially since the other author is no longer contributing? > (let's say I will provide a single author, published journal article, > referring specifically to this package). >I am not part of CRAN, as I prefaced my initial response with, so I can't speak to "prosecution". You will have to wait for them to respond (again) for a definitive answer to that. I do think, however, that if you did this specifically to disenfranchise your previous collaborator you would be morally in the wrong, and substantially so.> > The work of the other author is duly acknowledged in his position in the > authors' list. > As I previously wrote, citing Dusa and Other (2015) implies equal citation > rights for unequal work, a thing that I am uncomfortable with. There is a > huge amount of work being involved in this subsequent version, to which the > former author didn't contribute anything at all... >It really doesn't imply this at all, at least to me (and I don't think I'm alone here). In most authorship-listing schemes first author is the one who did the most direct work (wrote the draft, in the case of an article). On the other hand, citing Dusa (2015) implies NO work by Other in the entity being cited. That is clearly and concretely not the case. I will leave you with this, which may sound like a personal attack but I assure you it is not: I myself would not consider collaborating with you on a project given your apparent attitude towards the contributions of people no longer actively working on projects you own. Best, ~G> > Best wishes, > Adrian > > -- > Adrian Dusa > University of Bucharest > Romanian Social Data Archive > Soseaua Panduri nr.90 > 050663 Bucharest sector 5 > Romania >-- Gabriel Becker, PhD Computational Biologist Bioinformatics and Computational Biology Genentech, Inc. [[alternative HTML version deleted]]