ACM Sigsam: Computer Algebra System Bibliography

[Richard B. Kreckel]

Hi Alexander!

On Mon, 24 Nov 2003, Alexander Hulpke wrote:
> Dear Author(s) of the computer algebra system GiNaC.
>
> (if you are not (any longer) affiliated with this CAS, but know the current
> authors/maintainers, it would be very helpful if you could forward this mail
> to them, or if you could send me a short 'not here' reply.)

CC'd to <ginac-devel at ginac.de>.

> As you may know, SIGSAM, the ACM special interest group for symbolic
> computation, has started to build a collection of bibliographic references
> for computer algebra systems (CAS).
>
> The aim of such a collection is to persuade publishers, as well as authors,
> to cite use of a CAS in the same formal way as use of a paper, thus giving
> credit to the CAS developer(s).
> (See http://www.acm.org/sigsam/citation/policy.html for more details.)
>
> Alas the current version of this bibliography is missing many important
> CAS or is outdated.
>
> The aim of this mail is to solicit your input for such a citation for GiNaC.
> This citation could be a reference to a journal article describing the
> CAS, the CAS manual, or just the CAS itself.

In our case, I would suggest to simply cite the (non-)CAS itself.  There
is a journal article, easily to be found on our web-page.  However, I
hardly think that a printed description of a snapshot in time can capture
any ongoing work in a fair way.

I'm afraid most people would not hesitate and give a journal reference.
But in the case of evolving software that reference will be outdated ere
the paper appears in print.  And it would only be in support of the
publishing industry.  I'm afraid that citing web pages isn't much good
either, since "the average lifespan of a Web page today is 100 days.
This is no way to run a culture", as the board chairman of the Internet
Archive says.  (This is certainly exaggerated in our case; but it is
appropiate and appeard on slashdot only an hour ago.)

Alas, if you think about it, the whole idea about citations is in support
of the publishing industry as long as printed papers prevail and free
alternatives are still in their infancy (no, non-peer-reviewed arXiv does
not count).

In this spirit and in the presence of indexes into the internet and
packaged versions of the software shipped with some OSes, I would much
rather prefer to simply have the package stand for itself.

Just imagine, go ask B!ll Gat3z for a reference of M$-Word...  ;-)

If some other developer thinks that this is too much Nirvana-talk, please
go ahead and provide Alexander Hulpke with more conservative input.  We
should respect this and not object.  After all, journal references are
still quite relevant for a scientific career.

> Some issues you might want to consider for this are:
>
> - Is the authorship of this citation representative of all the CAS authors?
>
> - One big advantage of a uniform citation is the possibility to use data
>   bases such as the science citation index to search for publications citing
>   your CAS. (Such lists can be useful for example in tenure or promotion
>   cases.)
>   For such a search, however the citation has to be reasonably stable. (You
>   might want to keep author lists and large parts of the title to be stable
>   between versions to ease such a search.)
>
> - Some citation bases prefer citations that give a place and year of
>   publication.
>
> May I ask you to fill out/correct the appended form (simply as a text file)
> and to send the result back to me (hulpke at math.colostate.edu).
>
> If you are happy to be the 'public face' for the CAS ands there is no
> separate email for the CAS, simply copy the entry at 4 to the entry at 3 (we
> will not publish your address unless you explicitly listed the address there).
>
> For the citation BiBTeX is easiest to handle for producing the bibliography
> in the end, but if you only have a Text version this is fine as well.
> If you know MR or ZBl numbers for a review you can add entries for them
> as well.
>
> You can use the final text field to add a sentence or two that describes
> what your CAS does (someone stumbling upon the list might otherwise
> wonder what all the systems actually are).
>
> If you have several CAS (or versions of the CAS) that you would like
> to be listed separately, please return one copy of the form for each such
> CAS.
>
> Thank you very much for your help and cooperation!
>
>    Alexander Hulpke
>
> -- Colorado State University, Department of Mathematics,
> Weber Building, 1874 Campus Delivery, Fort Collins, CO 80523-1874, USA
> email: hulpke at math.colostate.edu, Phone: ++1-970-4914288
> http://www.math.colostate.edu/~hulpke
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 1. System Name:
> GiNaC
>
> 2. URL (Web page address) for the system:

<http://www.ginac.de/>

> 3. Public contact:

I suggest the mailing lists:
<ginac-devel at ginac.de> and <ginac-list at ginac.de>

> 4. Contact (only for updating this list. Will default to 3)

[ My Address deleted ]
I suggest to let it default to 3.

> 5. Citation:

As explained, I'ld suggest to leave it at:
"GiNaC is Not a CAS".

> 6. Descriptive text (at most 5 lines) that will be added to the citation list

I base this suggestion from the RPM package description:
: GiNaC (which stands for "GiNaC is Not a CAS (Computer Algebra System)")
: is an open framework for symbolic computation within the C++ programming
: language.  Published under the GPL.

Best wishes und nix für ungut!
                           -richy.
-- 
Richard B. Kreckel
<Richard.Kreckel at GiNaC.DE>
<http://www.ginac.de/~kreckel/>