The Rise and Fall of the Initial Era
For bibliographic and historical researchers, this work provides a novel historical perspective on scholarly record evolution, though it is largely descriptive and incremental.
The paper identifies and analyzes an 'initial era' in scholarly communications where authors used initials instead of full names, exploring the cultural and technological causes of its rise and fall over four centuries.
Bibliographic data is a rich source of information that goes beyond the use cases of location and citation -- it also encodes both cultural and technological context. For most of its existence, the scholarly record has changed slowly and hence provides an opportunity to gain insight through its reflection of the cultural norms of the research community over the last four centuries. While it is often difficult to distinguish the originating driver of change, it is still valuable to consider the motivating influences that have led to changes in the structure of the scholarly record. An "initial era" is identified during which initials were used in preference to full names by authors on scholarly communications. Causes of the emergence and demise of this era are considered as well as the implications of this era on research culture and practice.