Scientific

citation A citation is a reference to a source. More precisely, a citation is an abbreviated alphanumeric expression embedded in the body of an intellectual work that denotes an entry in the bibliographic references section of the work for the purpose o ...

is the process of systematically acknowledging sources from which information, data, ideas, or direct quotations are drawn in scholarly work.Sources in science are typically previously-published

peer-reviewed Peer review is the evaluation of work by one or more people with similar competencies as the producers of the work ( peers). It functions as a form of self-regulation by qualified members of a profession within the relevant field. Peer review ...

journal articles, books,

theses A thesis (: theses), or dissertation (abbreviated diss.), is a document submitted in support of candidature for an academic degree or professional qualification presenting the author's research and findings.International Standard ISO 7144: D ...

or dissertations,

conference papers A conference is a meeting, often lasting a few days, which is organized on a particular subject, or to bring together people who have a common interest. Conferences can be used as a form of group decision-making, although discussion, not always d ...

, and rarely private or public communications. Citations connect a researcher’s work with existing

literature Literature is any collection of Writing, written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially novels, Play (theatre), plays, and poetry, poems. It includes both print and Electroni ...

, ensuring transparency,

academic integrity Academic integrity is a moral code or ethical policy of academia. The term was popularized by Rutgers University professor Donald McCabe who is considered to be the "grandfather of academic integrity". Other academic integrity scholars and advoc ...

, and safe outcomes such as in medical science. Effective citation practices require clear, standardized mechanisms for referencing materials, particularly crucial as electronic publishing and online data repositories expand rapidly. Scientists generate

new knowledge Yonder, formerly named New Knowledge, formerly named Popily, was a company from Austin, Texas, that specialized in information integrity. It is most widely known for supporting the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in its investigation o ...

by practicing the

scientific method The scientific method is an Empirical evidence, empirical method for acquiring knowledge that has been referred to while doing science since at least the 17th century. Historically, it was developed through the centuries from the ancient and ...

on the thoughts, ideas, and work that scientists did before them. By applying scholarly principles, scientists may report their findings which become part of the chain of knowledge. Citations profoundly shape the structure of scientific knowledge by explicitly linking new research with existing academic literature. They define line of thought, give context to research within larger academic debates, and contribute to shared scholarly memory. Accurate citation practices that knowledge is verifiable, essential for scientific advancement. Like any complex system, there are problems, write large, with scientific citation. One issue is that rapid increase in digital data creates challenges in reliably verifying datasets due to a lack of standardized referencing practices, especially for online sets of data. Additionally, citation bias arises when researchers disproportionately reference studies based on

reputation The reputation or prestige of a social entity (a person, a social group, an organization, or a place) is an opinion about that entity – typically developed as a result of social evaluation on a set of criteria, such as behavior or performance. ...

or ease of access rather than merit, potentially marginalizing equally valid but less visible research. Also, citations can sometimes unintentionally distort or misrepresent original data or contexts, either through oversight, misunderstanding, or selective interpretation, thereby complicating accurate knowledge transfer and verification.

Patent references

patent law A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A ...

, the citation of previous works, or

prior art Prior art (also known as state of the art or background art) is a concept in patent law used to determine the patentability of an invention, in particular whether an invention meets the novelty and the inventive step or non-obviousness criteria f ...

, helps establish the

uniqueness Uniqueness is a state or condition wherein someone or something is unlike anything else in comparison, or is remarkable, or unusual. When used in relation to humans, it is often in relation to a person's personality, or some specific characterist ...

of the

invention An invention is a unique or novelty (patent), novel machine, device, Method_(patent), method, composition, idea, or process. An invention may be an improvement upon a machine, product, or process for increasing efficiency or lowering cost. It m ...

being described. The focus in this practice is to claim

originality Originality is the aspect of created or invented works that distinguish them from reproductions, clones, forgeries, or substantially derivative works. The modern idea of originality is according to some scholars tied to Romanticism, by a notion ...

for

commercial Commercial may refer to: * (adjective for) commerce, a system of voluntary exchange of products and services ** (adjective for) trade, the trading of something of economic value such as goods, services, information or money * a dose of advertising ...

purposes, and so the author is motivated to avoid citing works that cast doubt on their originality. This does not appear to be "scientific" citation. Inventors and lawyers have a legal obligation to cite all relevant art; not doing so risks invalidating the patent. The patent examiner is obliged to list all further prior art found in searches.

Digital object identifier (DOI)

Research and development

Citation analysis

Citation frequency

Modern scientists are sometimes judged by the number of times their work is cited by others—this is actually a key indicator of the relative

importance Importance is a Property (philosophy), property of entities that matter or make a difference. For example, World War II was an important event and Albert Einstein was an important person because of how they affected the world. There are disagreem ...

of a work in science. Accordingly, individual scientists are motivated to have their own work cited early and often and as widely as possible, but all other scientists are motivated to eliminate unnecessary citations so as not to devalue this means of

judgment Judgement (or judgment) is the evaluation of given circumstances to make a decision. Judgement is also the ability to make considered decisions. In an informal context, a judgement is opinion expressed as fact. In the context of a legal trial ...

. A formal

citation index A citation index is a kind of bibliographic index, an index of citations between publications, allowing the user to easily establish which later documents cite which earlier documents. A form of citation index is first found in 12th-century H ...

tracks which referred and reviewed papers have referred which other such papers. Baruch Lev and other advocates of

accounting reform Accounting, also known as accountancy, is the process of recording and processing information about economic entity, economic entities, such as businesses and corporations. Accounting measures the results of an organization's economic activit ...

consider the number of times a

patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an sufficiency of disclosure, enabling discl ...

is cited to be a significant metric of its quality, and thus of

innovation Innovation is the practical implementation of ideas that result in the introduction of new goods or service (economics), services or improvement in offering goods or services. ISO TC 279 in the standard ISO 56000:2020 defines innovation as "a n ...

Reviews A review is an evaluation of a publication, product, service, or company or a critical take on current affairs in literature, politics or culture. In addition to a critical evaluation, the review's author may assign the work a rating to indic ...

often replace citations to primary studies. Citation-frequency is one indicator used in

scientometrics Scientometrics is a subfield of informetrics that studies quantitative aspects of scholarly literature. Major research issues include the measurement of the impact of research papers and academic journals, the understanding of scientific citati ...

Replication crisis

Some studies explore citations and citation-frequencies. Researchers found that papers in leading journals with findings that can not be replicated tend to be cited more than reproducible science. Results that are published unreproducibly – or not in a replicable sufficiently transparent way – are more likely to be wrong, may slow progress and, according to an author, "a simple way to check how often studies have been repeated, and whether or not the original findings are confirmed" is needed. The authors also put forward possible explanations for this state of affairs.

Progress and citation consolidation

Papers and patents are using narrower portions of existing knowledge

Two

meta-analyses Meta-analysis is a method of synthesis of quantitative data from multiple independent studies addressing a common research question. An important part of this method involves computing a combined effect size across all of the studies. As such, th ...

reported that in a growing scientific field, citations disproportionately cite already well-cited papers, possibly slowing and inhibiting

progress Progress is movement towards a perceived refined, improved, or otherwise desired state. It is central to the philosophy of progressivism, which interprets progress as the set of advancements in technology, science, and social organization effic ...

to some degree. They find that "structures fostering disruptive scholarship and focusing attention on novel ideas" could be important. Other metascientists introduced the 'CD index' intended to characterize "how papers and patents change networks of citations in

science Science is a systematic discipline that builds and organises knowledge in the form of testable hypotheses and predictions about the universe. Modern science is typically divided into twoor threemajor branches: the natural sciences, which stu ...

and

technology Technology is the application of Conceptual model, conceptual knowledge to achieve practical goals, especially in a reproducible way. The word ''technology'' can also mean the products resulting from such efforts, including both tangible too ...

" and reported that it has declined, which they interpreted as " slowing rates of disruption". They proposed linking this to changes which they interpreted as "contemporary

discovery Discovery may refer to: * Discovery (observation), observing or finding something unknown * Discovery (fiction), a character's learning something unknown * Discovery (law), a process in courts of law relating to evidence Discovery, The Discovery ...

and

" being informed by "a narrower scope of existing

knowledge Knowledge is an Declarative knowledge, awareness of facts, a Knowledge by acquaintance, familiarity with individuals and situations, or a Procedural knowledge, practical skill. Knowledge of facts, also called propositional knowledge, is oft ...

". The overall number of papers has risen while the total of "highly disruptive" papers has not. The

1998 1998 was designated as the ''International Year of the Ocean''. Events January * January 6 – The ''Lunar Prospector'' spacecraft is launched into orbit around the Moon, and later finds evidence for Lunar water, frozen water, in soil i ...

discovery of the accelerating expansion of the universe has a CD index of 0. Their results also suggest scientists and inventors "may be struggling to keep up with the pace of knowledge expansion".

IT systems

Research discovery

Recommendation system Recommendation may refer to: * European Union recommendation, in international law * Letter of recommendation, in employment or academia * W3C recommendation, in Internet contexts * A computer-generated recommendation created by a recommender ...

s sometimes also use citations to find similar studies to the one the user is currently reading or that the user may be interested in and may find useful. Better availability of integrable open citation information could be useful in addressing the "overwhelming amount of scientific literature".

Q&A agents

Knowledge agents may use citations to find studies that are relevant to the user's query.

Wikipedia

There have been analyses of citations of science information on Wikipedia or of scientific citations on the site, e.g. enabling listing the most relevant or most-cited scientific journals and categories and dominant domains. Since 2015, the

altmetrics In scholarly and scientific publishing, altmetrics (stands for "alternative metrics") are non-traditional bibliometrics proposed as an alternative or complement to more traditional citation impact metrics, such as impact factor and H-index, ''h ...

platform Altmetric.com also shows citing English Wikipedia articles for a given study, later adding other language editions. The Wikimedia platform under development Scholia also shows "Wikipedia mentions" of scientific works. A study suggests a citation on Wikipedia "could be considered a public parallel to scholarly citation". A scientific publication being "cited in a Wikipedia article is considered an indicator of some form of impact for this publication" and it may be possible to detect certain publications through changes to Wikipedia articles. Wikimedia Research's Cite-o-Meter tool showed a league table of which academic publishers are most cited on Wikipedia as does a page by the "Academic Journals WikiProject". Research indicates a large share of academic citations on the platform are

paywall A paywall is a method of restricting access to content (media), content, with a purchase or a subscription business model, paid subscription, especially news. Beginning in the mid-2010s, newspapers started implementing paywalls on their website ...

ed and hence inaccessible to many readers. "^{citation needed">citation_needed.html" ;"title="/nowiki> citation needed/sup>" is a tag (metadata)">tag added by Wikipedia editor">citation needed">citation needed/sup>" is a tag (metadata)">tag added by Wikipedia editors to unsourced statements in articles requesting citation

A citation is a reference to a source. More precisely, a citation is an abbreviated alphanumeric expression embedded in the body of an intellectual work that denotes an entry in the bibliographic references section of the work for the purpose o ...
s to be added. The phrase is reflective of the policy">policies

Policy is a deliberate system of guidelines to guide decisions and achieve rational outcomes. A policy is a statement of intent and is implemented as a procedure or protocol. Policies are generally adopted by a governance body within an orga ...}

Patent references

Digital object identifier (DOI)

Research and development

Citation analysis

Citation frequency

Replication crisis

Progress and citation consolidation

IT systems

Research discovery

Q&A agents

Wikipedia

Differentiation of semantic citation contexts

Retractions

See also

Notes

References

Further reading

External links