Walter, your headline reminded me of a favorite scene from Woody Allen’s Bananas:
Nancy: You’re immature, Fielding.
Fielding Mellish: [whining] How am I immature?
Nancy: Well, emotionally, sexually, and intellectually.
Fielding Mellish: Yeah, but what other ways?
Anyhow, while I admire your passion on the vital bibliographic issues of our day, I’m afraid your normally sharp research skills have let you down. You must have run across an old, obsolete version of my CV, because for years I’ve reported my publications exactly your preferred format. It’s right there on my public website, where even a technophobic Jewish grandmother can find it.
On a more serious note, the format you object to, and which I once used, is fairly common among economists, and perhaps some other social scientists and humanities scholars, but virtually unknown in the hard sciences. In part, I think this is because author order is a big deal in some disciplines, but not in others, like economics. I remember once telling a scientist colleague that in most of my papers, authors were listed alphabetically. He was flabbergasted. In his field, the lead author (the one who directs the lab, got the grant, or otherwise supervised the project) is always first; in other fields, the leader goes last.
I wish I could remember the authoring convention for this article; it was either alphabetical, or the stud of the group was listed last.
7:59 pm on May 2, 2015
