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Literary runaway: Increasingly more references cited per academic research article from 1980 to 2019

Author

Listed:
  • Can Dai
  • Quan Chen
  • Tao Wan
  • Fan Liu
  • Yanbing Gong
  • Qingfeng Wang

Abstract

References are employed in most academic research papers to give credits and to reflect scholarliness. With the upsurge in academic publications in recent decades, we are curious to know how the number of references cited per research article has changed across different disciplines over that time. The results of our study showed significant linear growth in reference density in eight disciplinary categories between 1980 and 2019 indexed in Web of Science. It appears that reference saturation is not yet in sight. Overall, the general increase in the number of publications and the advanced accessibility of the Internet and digitized documents may have promoted the growth in references in certain fields. However, the seemingly runaway tendency should be well appreciated and objectively assessed. We suggest that authors focus on their research itself rather than on political considerations during the process of writing, especially the selection of important references to cite.

Suggested Citation

  • Can Dai & Quan Chen & Tao Wan & Fan Liu & Yanbing Gong & Qingfeng Wang, 2021. "Literary runaway: Increasingly more references cited per academic research article from 1980 to 2019," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(8), pages 1-13, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0255849
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0255849
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Mohammad Hossein Biglu, 2008. "The influence of references per paper in the SCI to Impact Factors and the Matthew Effect," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 74(3), pages 453-470, March.
    2. Helmut A. Abt & Eugene Garfield, 2002. "Is the relationship between numbers of references and paper lengths the same for all sciences?," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 53(13), pages 1106-1112, November.
    3. Günter Krampen, 2010. "Acceleration of citing behavior after the millennium? Exemplary bibliometric reference analyses for psychology journals," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 83(2), pages 507-513, May.
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    1. Katchanov, Yurij L. & Markova, Yulia V. & Shmatko, Natalia A., 2023. "Uncited papers in the structure of scientific communication," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 17(2).

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