Design for referencing stock assessment in report

[Schiano-NOAA]

Hi all! I am working on a new feature that would create a global bib file for ALL stock assessment reports for easier reference in {asar} generated reports. To move forward with this, I need to develop a standard way way of citing the report. I am specifically talking about how the citation looks in the references section.

Currently I have this:

NWFSC. Sep 2026. Status of Petrale Sole off the U.S. West Coast. Silver Spring, MD. 123 p. Accessible at https://github.com/nmfs-ost/asar.

In this style, the office or organization who published the report is identified in the beginning. This is only one approach. We could also use the lead analyst's name, but I can see both pros and cons for not taking that approach.

The in text citation could look like this: (NWFSC 2025)

Does anyone have any preferences or ideas on how best to structure our stock assessment report citations? Any other metadata that should be included or helpful? Please ask around your region and bring a representative suggestion, thank you!

@nmfs-ost/asar-collaborators

[okenk]

We always cite assessments based on actual human authors and I feel fairly strongly that should be the case.

[okenk]

This generated a lot of chatter on our google space where there was essentially strong universal support for our current (NWFSC) approach, with one person possibly attempting to find a middle ground (but I am not quite sure it actually exists). Here were some arguments:

1. Does any science center except SEFSC use this format? I think it does not make sense to follow what one science center does when the other five do it similarly.
2. For early career researchers and academics, co-authorship on a stock assessment carries meaning and can be important for career development. I do not see a way this approach does not weaken that opportunity in some way.
3. Related to (2), but slightly different, we have many coauthors (e.g., state agency reps, students) who do a lot of work on our assessments and are unaffiliated with science centers, so citing it as a NWFSC publication essentially erases their contributions.
4. "It is a real bummer when I look up an assessment from the SEFSC and cannot find a human I can reach out to talk about it."
5. "Our branding here at the NWFSC is a little odd, since these are housed on the Council website, and so are PFMC documents. The actual citation would then be PFMC, not NWFSC," which is even more undesirable.
6. We should follow the approach you would use for any other scientific publication. The institution is still in the full citation on the title page, where author affiliations are located (and, again, are not all NWFSC).

[kellijohnson-NOAA]

Thanks Kiva for the explanation and for reaching out to others at your science center. And, sorry if I made it seem like Sam's suggestion was based on the SEFSC. I am not trying to pit science centers against each other but just wanted to bring to light that we realize there are multiple ways of doing things. The majority of the time we do not have the background information of why choices are made. Her suggestion was based on what type of metadata we have currently have stored in SIS and it was not choosing one science center over another.

[okenk]

One other point that was raised was that, many types of reports (for example, our ecosystem status report) are cited with individual authors. So if there were a change it should be done comprehensively across the organization rather than just to a single type of report.

[DHennen1]

NEFSC does not traditionally identify individual authors - although in recent years a reader can find the author by looking at each chapter or the document metadata. I think this was done here to protect individuals from political blowback, or stake holder ire, when the assessment suggests reduction in quota. Things are not the same here as on the west coast.

[Schiano-NOAA]

Those are all good points the NW center brought up and quite valid @okenk. I also think the SE center follows the same rationale as @DHennen1 had mentioned; however, there is a table of participants that lists the lead assessment author that's fairly easy to find (granted you probably need to be familiar with their report format). I'm more than happy to make adjustments to the citation and was a reason I made this discussion.

[BenWilliams-NOAA]

Assessments for the NPFMC follow these guidelines:

The title page should include text on how to cite the assessment document, based on the following example.
This report may be cited as:
Authors., Year. Title. North Pacific Fishery Management Council, Anchorage, AK. Available from https://www.npfmc.org/library/safe-reports/

Easily accomplished using @incollection for the .bib

@incollection{Williams2023,
  author      = {Benjamin C. Williams and Peter-John F. Hulson and Chris R. Lunsford},
  title       = {{Assessment of the Northern Rockfish stock in the Gulf of Alaska}},
  booktitle    = {{Stock assessment and fishery evaluation report for the groundfish resources of the Gulf of Alaska}},
  publisher    = {North Pacific Fishery Management Council, Anchorage, AK},
  year         = {2023},
  url         = {https://www.npfmc.org/library/safe-reports/} 
}

[kellijohnson-NOAA]

Thanks @BenWilliams-NOAA do you or others from your science center have anything to add beyond the reasons that Kiva gave above for why individual authors are cited instead of a council or a region?

[BenWilliams-NOAA]

I think @okenk covered things quite elegantly. Similarly, I would note that the council nor the region are necessarily the authors. The overall regional SAFE is a product of the council Plan Team, with the chapters coming from author(s), which are sometimes council staff (catch reports), but more often assessment authors from within and outside of a science center(s). Makes sense to credit the folks doing the work.

[Schiano-NOAA]

I agree that we should include authorship in some way. (just to be devil's advocate) I proposed the above citation in order to create a distinction of an assessment report to another tech memo or other identifier for a citation because they carry great importance and their length and density should be classified at least differently. With that said, the one I proposed clearly lacks authorship and from the response so far, it needs to be in the citation. 😄

I believe the NE used a format of a citation for a tech memo. @DHennen1 is this correct?

[DHennen1]

@Schiano-NOAA - yes that's correct

[DHennen1]

Does this have to be one way or the other? It seems like there is room for multiple options since .bib is a very flexible tool. You can use @TechReport or build a custom option for the non-author specific option, and use Ben's @incollection tag for the author specific ones. We have been using:

@TechReport{NEFSC_2020_MTA_FALL,
author = "{Northeast Fisheries Science Center}",
title = "Fall Management Track Assessments 2020",
institution = "Northeast Fisheries Science Center",
address ="",
number="NEFSC Ref. Doc. 22-08",
type={\notype{}},
note="173 p.",
month="",
pages = "1--173",
year = "2022",
url="https://repository.library.noaa.gov/view/noaa/39404"
}

I think NEFSC will probably use authors going forward since we will no longer be bundling multiple assessment reports into one doc during the asar era, but we still have to refer to the old reports in the way in which they were written. I imagine SEFSC would still want to use generic authorship.

[Schiano-NOAA]

This could be a possibility, but for the sake of consistency across the agency, it would be best if we could adopt a singular one. This question came about due to a feature I am working on that extracts all of the citation metadata from SIS to automatically generate a bib file with ALL stock assessment reports from NMFS. We probably could make these regional based citations, but it would stray from the spirit of the workflows effort as a whole imo

[DHennen1]

I went into SIS to look at what they had for NEFSC reports - and I suppose that could work for us. The author is frequently 'NEFSC', but generally when they have a name, it is the correct primary author (although not always).

[Schiano-NOAA]

Okay that's good to know. I can also ask the SIS devs to extract the authorship from the reports (if that's even possible) since there is some additional metadata they still need to create.

[CaitlinAkselrud-NOAA]

Just to chime in here- I understand the drive toward national standards. However, I think we do still need some customizable flexibility here, as we do with much of the rest of the stock assessment. Things do vary by region and wanting to protect assessment authors from backlash is valid where appropriate. At the SWFSC, we do list individual contributing authors for all the reasons Kiva covered— I will say I prefer this and have benefitted from being a student coauthor on stock assessments when applying for NMFS positions. The NW does A LOT of stock assessment training with students and we are working toward doing more of that here at the SW. I think this training and coauthorship is a big incentive for a lot of students/future stock assessment scientists, and it’s important to keep that pipeline going. For those reasons (and everything else Kiva listed), I’d be strongly against a nationwide standard of NMFS as the author. *Caitlin Allen Akselrud, M.S.* Research Fish Biologist Fisheries Resources Division NOAA National Marine Fisheries Service Southwest Fisheries Science Center 8901 La Jolla Shores Drive, La Jolla, CA 92037 ‬ email: ***@***.*** phone: 858-546-5613 fax: 858-202-5302

…

On Tue, Aug 25, 2026 at 6:36 AM Sam (Schiano) Bredeck < ***@***.***> wrote: Okay that's good to know. I can also ask the SIS devs to extract the authorship from the reports (if that's even possible) since there is some additional metadata they still need to create. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#542?email_source=notifications&email_token=APUHJYMU7XULM3CQD7TRC535LWI4BA5CNFSNUABIM5UWIORPF5TWS5BNNB2WEL2ENFZWG5LTONUW63SDN5WW2ZLOOQXTCOBRGQ4TAMBSUZZGKYLTN5XKY5DFMFWV63LFNZ2GS33OUVSXMZLOOSWGM33PORSXEX3DNRUWG2Y#discussioncomment-18149002>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/APUHJYL4LXMFMBCCH6IEB2D5LWI4BAVCNFSNUABIKJSXA33TNF2G64TZHM3TMMBVGY2TMNJWHNCGS43DOVZXG2LPNY5TCMBWG44TQMJUUF3AE> . You are receiving this because you are on a team that was mentioned.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[MOshima-PIFSC]

Just chiming in with PIFSC perspective, we also cite assessment reports by author name.

[Schiano-NOAA]

It seems like the consensus is to shift towards an authorship based citation. Would everyone prefer to have regional citations and follow current guidelines or take a centralized approach, but using authorship as the base for citations (similar to Ben's suggestion or other similar approach)?

[lisaailloud-NOAA]

I'm checking with the SEFSC & SEDAR what the reasoning is behind not using authors in our region. I think Ben is right that it has something to do with protecting individuals from political blowback but at the same time our names are clearly apparent later on in the report so I'm not sure it's that effective. I personally think we would benefit from having our names listed as authors but I'd have to make sure that was a shared sentiment across the SEFSC before giving you a definitive answer.

[Schiano-NOAA]

Thank you Lisa. That is extremely helpful to know. Please do ask around and let me know 😄

[Schiano-NOAA]

Alternative suggestion:

Authors. Year. Title. Publishing office. # p. Accessible at [URL/DOI].

In text citation:

([First Author last name] [Year])

Please upvote if you would like to see this as the standard

[okenk]

I like this but for in text would recommend standard citation practices where for two authors it is (author1 & author2 year) and for three+ authors it is (author1 et al. year)

[Schiano-NOAA]

Regional based citation according to current standards for each region

Please upvote if you would like to see this as the standard