🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <C097xD.9y8.1@cs.cmu.edu>, dstewart+@cs.cmu.edu (David B Stewart) writes:
|> First of all, our university library has many technical reports from
|> other universities, as they are considered appropriate for citation.

Your library has tech reports *because* they are considered appropriate for 
citation?  More likely, faculty asked for and possibly paid for the library's 
collection.  That doesn't mean they're appropriate to cite.

|> Second, it is always possible to obtain a copy of a technical report
|> at no cost, simply by contacting the department and university directly.

This is not universally true.  Many universities charge money for technical 
reports.  Moreover, at some universities, the publication of tech. reports
is sporadic.  

I have nothing against technical reports as a means of rapidly disseminating 
information, but as you yourself point out, they're not peer-reviewed, and I
maintain that they're not consistently accessible enough to cite.  Besides,
the report in question was from 1986, and if it were of high enough quality,
wouldn't it have been published elsewhere by now (see, e.g., Kevin Dowling's
post)?

In any case, my complaint is that the reviewer told the author to cite the tech. 
report (which as it turns out is apparently obsolete).  I suppose I wouldn't have
a problem with an author citing tech. reports if the author were willing to send
the reviewers copies of the report.
-- 
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Christopher Ian Connolly			connolly@cs.umass.edu
Laboratory for Perceptual Robotics		wa2ifi
University of Massachusetts at Amherst		Amherst, MA 01003