Cheap Shots

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It is easy to take pot-shots at EasyBib. They make it too easy, as I have suggested many times over the years.  They have an imperfect citation generator which frequently churns out incorrectly-formatted citations (especially in auto-citation mode). They give wrong advice in their guides to citation styles. They have produced many flawed add-ons which attempt to enable “Smarter Research. Powered by You,” such as their Research and Essaycheck services (both of which were abandoned some years ago; the links here go to the Internet Archive records).  Their grammar and spelling checkers need to be used with great care – but that goes for many, probably most, possibly all grammar and spelling checkers.

[Among my various blog posts whch mention EasyBib, Getting it wrong…, Not so easy does it, APA mythtakes  and Not such a wise OWL are particularly pertinent here.)

As I say, EasyBib makes it easy to shoot ’em down.  I probably would not have bothered this time, except that, clearing my inboxes (long overdue), I came across an EasyBib blog post which Continue reading

Good for a hangover

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Speaking through the Dean in Hogfather, Terry Pratchett remarked that what is good for a hangover is drinking heavily the night before.

I get that feeling thinking about Cite This For Me (a Chegg product).  It works, every time, and I don’t even need the alcohol.

Join me on this voyage of serendipity (if you dare).

It starts with the May 2018 subject report on the IB MYP Personal Project.  On page 3 we read

Those candidates who did not include an evaluation of their sources (which could be done through a CARRDS or OPVL tool) limited their achievement; there was often insufficient identification and evidence of other research skills

I know that OVPL is an evaluation tool often used in history and similar disciplines; you consider the Origin, Purpose, Value and Limitation of sources.  I could not recall meeting CARRDS before, but the context suggests that it is similar to the CRAAP tool, the acronym standing for Currency, Relevance, Accuracy, Authority and Purpose.

A quick search Google on Google confirms this: Continue reading

By any other brand-name, not so sweet?

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Something is afoot in the world of reference generators. The American company Chegg, which claims to be  “all about removing the obstacles that stand in the way of the education YOU want and deserve” [Chegg: What we’re about], seems to be buying up service after service.

They already own CitationMachine,  BibMe, EasyBib, and CiteThisForMe. None of them is particularly good at what they claim to do, and (in their free versions and since being taken over by Chegg) they are bedevilled by splash and flash advertising (as with Citation Machine, illustrated on the right).

Several of my earlier posts point directly or indirectly to shortcomings in these services.  Their auto-citation generators leave much to be desired. They also leave much to be edited or added after the reference is auto-generated. A common plaint is that students don’t do this – they unthinkingly and uncritically accept auto-generated output no matter how many errors or omissions.  Alas, the manual form-filling modes are often not much better. Too often Continue reading