[Esip-preserve] How to cite the works of the committee

[Mark A. Parsons]

Dear ESIP Preservationists and Stewards,

Our committee has published two documents on the new ESIP commons:
- Data Citation Guidelines for Data Providers and Archives
- Interagency Data Stewardship Guidelines

The question now is to how to cite documents. In particular, who should have the credit and accountability of authorship?

Since both documents have been approved by the ESIP assembly, we could just use ESIP as the author. That's vague but sounds authoritative. We could be more specific and use the Preservation and Stewardship Committee, but the membership is fluid so that's not particularly specific. With both documents, I think there was a clear lead author or two so one could use a name or two plus the committee. For example, we might have something like:

Ramapriyan, H. K. and the ESIP Data Preservation and Stewardship Committee. 2012. Interagency Data Stewardship Guidelines . ESIP Commons. [DOI or ARK].

or

Parsons, M.A., R. Duerr, C. Tilmes  and the ESIP Data Preservation and Stewardship Committee. 2012. Data Citation Guidelines for Data Providers and Archives. ESIP Commons. [DOI or ARK].

From a credit and general authority perspective I don't like naming specific individuals, but there's value in being specific from an accountability perspective. Plus it will always be tricky to decide who exactly should be named. The citation guidelines, for example, were definitely a group effort.

Thoughts?

Cheers,

-m.