Research skills: referencing
All the postgrads at the UoB are supposed to take a module called Research Skills. This is to disseminate the soft skills that are almost never taught formally, and are usually absorbed through mentors or just trial and error. Our first class's theme was referencing or rather "The consequences of incorrect referencing". Our faculty had collected real incorrect references from papers and asked us to find the correct paper in the library (We had to get special permission from the custodian of the library to be allowed to talk (or curse!) inside the library for about an hour).
The carelessness with which people insert references, make finding the original paper difficult in the best case. It's almost absurdly simple to insert a reference such that the original paper is never found! Especially if it's from 'grey literature' or unpublished theses and such. Volume numbers, part numbers, year of publication, page numbers are all exceedingly important in citing references. Of course, I'm assuming that it's self-evident that folks don't create their own abbreviations or misspell the author or the paper title (though I did see examples of these as well). Oh well, I'm not going to forget that lesson in a hurry.
The carelessness with which people insert references, make finding the original paper difficult in the best case. It's almost absurdly simple to insert a reference such that the original paper is never found! Especially if it's from 'grey literature' or unpublished theses and such. Volume numbers, part numbers, year of publication, page numbers are all exceedingly important in citing references. Of course, I'm assuming that it's self-evident that folks don't create their own abbreviations or misspell the author or the paper title (though I did see examples of these as well). Oh well, I'm not going to forget that lesson in a hurry.