I have often been accused of writing the sort of paper which cannot be published in any kind of respectable journal because nobody sees the types of references which are required to support my views, as well as to give due credit to the sources from which so many of my ideas have come. (I would claim nearly all of my ideas are based on those that preceded my existence, and which I then encountered.)
For this I apologize, as I prefer synthesizing ideas rather than tagging them for future citation, and I also confess that in this respect I am a lazy academic. Now the reader may appreciate why I would be interested in a tool like nViews which could conveniently keep track of all my academic accounting, leaving me to those parts of the work I truly enjoy. But the question which remains to be answered is, "Would what I publish then, be any worthier than what I publish now?" It has often been said that it is a poor workman indeed that blames his tools, and hence there can be no more foolish a worker than one who believes that the better the tool, the better the work. And what if it is not possible to exactly determine the source of one's ideas? We can all only hope that subconscious plagiarism is not a crime, but an affliction to be pitied.
I have had several papers published, and I have presented at conferences, and on the whole I found the entire process dull and boring. I apologize again to those who conferred my degrees, but it is far more fun to publish in the manner of one's choosing. Soon, perhaps, we will all be able to act as our own publishers and referees, and let a broader community decide the fate of our intellectual endeavours.
Ted Kesik, January 1996.