What are the rules for reference requests?

Question

I'm hoping that this hasn't already been answered, but I was wanting to ask a question asking for help finding books on a particular topic. In particular, I was looking for help locating introductory books on Behavioral Operations Research. (So far, I've only been able to find one quality book on the topic).

What are the rules about asking this kind of question? I know that some other Stack Exchange sites (e.g. Stack Overflow) have flat-out banned recommendation requests like this, but I did notice that there is a reference-request tag, which would suggest that it's sometimes acceptable here.

There has been some discussion about this on other sites, too, such as on Literature SE, but I didn't see an official policy for this particular site.

Also, the question is about behavioral operations research, so I was a little confused about where to post this question. Is it acceptable to post that here (since it's a question on behavioral operations research), or would it be more appropriate to post it on Economics SE? Which site would I be more likely to get good answers about the topic on?

Answer 1

In response to Steven Jeuris' comment, there have been quite some questions asking for suggestions, one better received than others:

• Open-source software for analyzing Electrodermal activity
• What software to use for psychology questionnaire?
• Open source software for analyzing Heart Rate Variability (HRV)
• Introduction or Tutorial on Continuous EEG Collection Procedures and Initial Processing?
• Introductory resources on developmental psychology/neuroscience
• The current recommended text for statistics in behavioural sciences
• Introductory resources on bayesian modeling for cognitive sciences

I believe these questions can be of value and I would consider them on-topic. I believe that, if the question follows the guidelines I argued for here (and they are not too broad or unclear), the recommendation question should be perceived as on-topic.

There are, however, also questions that have been closed, such as Good Resources for Learning Modeling of fMRI Data . There is thus not an overall consensus on this matter, yet.

Answer 2

On the other hand, I think that these are questions that can easily sit in limbo. Questions like this one (which ends in "does anything like this exist") can either:

1. Be answered quickly and authoritatively with citations, etc. These answers meet all community guidelines. Or...
2. Sit forever. The answer "no" to such questions takes an extreme familiarity with the literature of the field to be confident enough to give an authoritative "no, nowhere does this exist." Additionally, answers of "no" may not necessarily have citations and may not be long. It would simply be "Nope, doesn't exist!" (more a comment than an answer). Personally, I am very hesitant to give such an answer even in fields I am familiar with, as another community member may know an article/survey/text that addresses this (that I am unfamiliar with). This can result in questions that simply sit unanswered...

This isn't a matter of being over/under specified (to broad/narrow), or being on/off topic, or being of limited use. It's just that when the answer is "no" to such questions, there may not be an acceptable SE answer to give (and everyone may wait for someone "more knowledgeable" to try to give it).

Because of this, I very much like the suggestions @Steven mentioned and linked: looking for a specific article (from a specific source) has a much better chance of being answered appropriately (a negation can reference the source), and IMHO should be the only type of reference requests.