In getting your manuscript accepted by a journal, you may have been annoyed by the journal’s insistence that you format the references in a certain style. At times, you may have wondered why the journal said that because as far as you could see, you had formatted the references in that style. This article will explain these intricacies; more importantly, it will tell you how citing sources is an integral part of research and how appropriate citations help you become part of (what was once referred to as the ‘invisible college’) a network of researchers working on a particular topic. In this article, the first of two in this series, we delve into what, when, and how to cite in a research paper.
Why cite?
“If I have seen further,” Isaac Newton wrote in a letter to Robert Hooke, “it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” This was in 1675, and science has since become increasingly collaborative. You build on the work of other researchers, who, in turn, build on your work. And appropriate citation in research papers is a time-honoured way of acknowledging that debt. Citations in research papers are tokens through which you show how your work is connected to the work of other researchers.
The second purpose of citing a research paper is to indicate the source of your information or facts. After all, only a small proportion of what we know is based on first-hand knowledge; we depend on others for the information we need, whether it is in the form of statistics, chemical and physical properties of substances, laws and regulations, or anything else. In all such cases, citations in research papers inform readers of the source of such information so that they can judge for themselves the credibility of that information and look into more details on how the information was obtained, sample size, geographic limitations if any, and so on.
How to cite in a research paper
Citations in research paper text can be in the form of numbers (often referred to as the Vancouver system) or may consist of the names of authors and the year of publication (the Harvard system). For example, “Persistent pain has numerous deleterious effects on physical, psychological, and social functioning and thereby contributes to deteriorating health-related quality of life.3–6” or “Culture has become an important aspect of foreign/second language (FL/L2) instruction (Brown, 2000).” When deciding how to cite in a research paper, check the style used by the journal to which you plan to submit your manuscript.
Incidentally, both Vancouver and Harvard styles have minor variations, so trivial that you may have failed to notice them. For instance, take numbered citations in research papers: Should the numbers be superscripts or positioned normally (referred to as ‘in line’)? Should they be within brackets? If so, square brackets or round brackets? And, if at the end of a sentence, should the numbers be placed before the period (full stop) or after? All these forms are seen in the wild.
The Harvard system too has its quirks when it comes to citing a research paper: Should the names be separated from the year of publication with a comma or only with space? Should multiple citations – all within one pair of parentheses – be arranged alphabetically by the author? Chronologically? Chronologically but in reverse order, with the most recent source listed first? The Harvard system also uses the Latin abbreviation et al. (which means ‘and others’) to limit the number of authors that need to be listed; however, some journals set the abbreviation in italics (et al.) whereas other set it in normal type. Nor do the journals agree on when to use the abbreviation: For three or more authors? For seven or more authors? . . . Now you may realize what the journal meant when it asked you to follow its preferred style for adding citations in research papers.
What to cite in a research paper and when
Although it is expected that you will supply the sources of your information or even of opinions and observations that are not your own, some categories of information and sources are ‘exempt’ as it were. For instance, widely known facts and observations do not require any citations in research papers, such as ‘the DNA is the material through which hereditary characters are transmitted from parents to their offspring’ or ‘Water boils at higher temperatures when under pressure.’
Although every citation in a research paper’s text has to have a matching reference in the list appended to the paper under the heading ‘References’ or ‘Sources cited’, sources that are not publicly available are mentioned only in the text, without any matching reference. The reason is that the sources listed under references are expected to be available to all. Take the case of your own research. Assume that you have submitted a manuscript for possible publication in a journal and you wish to cite that as the source of some data: now, you cannot supply a regular citation because the paper is yet to be accepted, let alone published. In that case, you can give the name(s) of author(s), followed by the phrase ‘unpublished data’. No matching reference is given. However, if the manuscript in question has been accepted, use ‘in press’ or ‘forthcoming’ instead when citing the research paper and, in the references, mention the title of the manuscript and the name of the journal.
Similarly, if the source of information is an email message, a letter, or even personal conversation, mention the family name of the person in question, followed by the expression ‘personal communication’ (or ‘pers. comm.’ if that is the journal’s preference) for citations in research papers.
It is also expected that you cite only those documents that you have read for yourself. In rare cases, when you have not been able to do so and are going by what somebody else has cited, you are expected to mention both the sources and indicate that you have consulted only one, as in “The idea that spinach is a good source of iron is a myth that was born in the 1930s, due to a misplaced decimal point, causing the concentration to appear ten times higher than its real value (Hamblin, 1981, cited in Larsson, 1995).” Incidentally, please read the paper by Rekdal [1].
Self citation in research papers
As citations in research papers are being used a measure of impact – and therefore linked to promotions, tenure, funding, employment, and so on – researchers are tempted to cite their own research papers. At times, journals themselves expect that manuscripts being submitted to the journal in question will cite at least a few papers published in that journal so as to boost its impact factor. Although self citations (whether authors citing their own papers or papers published in the journals to which they are submitting their manuscripts) are acceptable as long as they are relevant, excessive self citations need to be avoided.
But what is ‘excessive’ citation in research papers? Clarivate Analytics, the publishers of Journal Citation Reports (on which the impact factor is based) consider a self-citation rate of 20% or less as typical of reputable journals.
As you can see, referencing and citing in research papers involve a great deal of mechanical details. One way to check whether these are handled correctly in your manuscript is to do a thorough submission readiness check that flags any discrepancies, departures from standard style, and mismatches between citations and references. Because the topic of citations and references is so full of details, we will cover references in Part 2 of this article.
References:
- Rekdal O B. 2014. Academic urban legends. Social Studies of Science44: 638–654.
