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Broadly, a citation is a reference to a published or unpublished source (not always the original source). More precisely, a citation is an abbreviated alphanumeric expression (e.g. [Newell84]) embedded in the body of an intellectual work that denotes an entry in the bibliographic references section of the work for the purpose of acknowledging the relevance of the works of others to the topic of discussion at the spot where the citation appears. Generally the combination of both the in-body citation and the bibliographic entry constitutes what is commonly thought of as a citation (whereas bibliographic entries by themselves are not). References to single, machine-readable assertions in electronic scientific articles are known as nanopublications, a form of microattribution.
Citation has several important purposes: to uphold intellectual honesty (or avoiding plagiarism),[1] to attribute prior or unoriginal work and ideas to the correct sources, to allow the reader to determine independently whether the referenced material supports the author's argument in the claimed way, and to help the reader gauge the strength and validity of the material the author has used.[2]
The forms of citations generally subscribe to one of the generally accepted citations systems, such as the Oxford,[3] Harvard, MLA, American Sociological Association (ASA), American Psychological Association (APA), and other citations systems, as their syntactic conventions are widely known and easily interpreted by readers. Each of these citation systems has its respective advantages and disadvantages relative to the trade-offs of being informative (but not too disruptive) and thus are chosen relative to the needs of the type of publication being crafted. Editors often specify the citation system to use.
Bibliographies, and other list-like compilations of references, are generally not considered citations because they do not fulfil the true spirit of the term: deliberate acknowledgement by other authors of the priority of one's ideas.[4]
Citation content can vary depending on the type of source and may include:
Along with information such as author(s), date of publication, title and page numbers, citations may also include unique identifiers depending on the type of work being referred to.
Broadly speaking, there are two types of citation systems: [9]
Vancouver Referencing Styles are a group of styles that use sequential numbers in the text. The numbers refer to either footnotes (notes at the end of the page) or endnotes (notes on a page at the end of the paper) that provide source detail. They are either bracketed or superscript.[9] The notes system may or may not require a full bibliography, depending on whether the writer has used a full note form or a shortened note form.
For example, an excerpt from the text of a paper using a notes system without a full bibliography could look like:
The note, located either at the foot of the page (footnote) or at the end of the paper (endnote) would look like this:
In a paper with a full bibliography, the shortened note could look like:
The bibliography entry, required with a shortened note, would look like this:
In the humanities, many authors use footnotes or endnotes to supply anecdotal information. In this way, what looks like a citation is actually supplementary material, or suggestions for further reading.[10]
Parenthetical referencing also known as Harvard referencing where full or partial, in-text citations are enclosed within parentheses and embedded in the paragraph, as opposed to the footnote style.[9]
An example of a parenthetical reference would be:
(Smith 2010, p. 1)
Depending on the choice of style, fully cited parenthetical references may require no end section. Alternately a list of the citations with complete bibliographical references may be included in an end section sorted alphabetically by author's last name.
This section may be known as:
However, the in-text referencing style in online publications may differ from the conventional parenthetical referencing. A full reference can be hidden and displayed in the form of a tooltip on a reader's request.[11] This style makes citing easier and improves the reader's experience.
Citation styles can be broadly divided into styles common to the Humanities and the Sciences, though there is considerable overlap. Some style guides, such as the Chicago Manual of Style, are quite flexible and cover both parenthetical and note citation systems. Others, such as MLA and APA styles, specify formats within the context of a single citation system. These may be referred to as citation formats as well as citation styles.[12][13][14] The various guides thus specify order of appearance, for example, of publication date, title, and page numbers following the author name, in addition to conventions of punctuation, use of italics, emphasis, parenthesis, quotation marks, etc., particular to their style.
A number of organizations have created styles to fit their needs; consequently, a number of different guides exist. Individual publishers often have their own in-house variations as well, and some works are so long-established as to have their own citation methods too: Stephanus pagination for Plato; Bekker numbers for Aristotle; citing the Bible by book, chapter and verse; or Shakespeare notation by play,
In some areas of the Humanities, footnotes are used exclusively for references, and their use for conventional footnotes (explanations or examples) is avoided. In these areas, the term "footnote" is actually used as a synonym for "reference", and care must be taken by editors and typesetters to ensure that they understand how the term is being used by their authors.
In the case of direct citations, the boundaries of a citation are apparent from the quotation marks. However, the boundaries of indirect citations are usually unknown. To clarify these boundaries, citation marks (˻…˼) can be used. Example:
Here, it becomes apparent from the citation marks that the citation refers to both sentence 2 and 3, but not to sentence 1.
In their research on footnotes in scholarly journals in the field of communication, Michael Bugeja and Daniela V. Dimitrova have found that citations to online sources have a rate of decay (as cited pages are taken down), which they call a "half-life," that renders footnotes in those journals less useful for scholarship over time.[26]
Other experts have found that published replications do not have as many citations as original publications.[27]
Another important issue is citation errors, which often occur due to carelessness on either the researcher or journal editor's part in the publication procedure. Experts have found that simple precautions, such as consulting the author of a cited source about proper citations, reduce the likelihood of citation errors and thus increase the quality of research.[28]
Research suggests the number of citations an article receives can be, partly, explained by superficial factors and not only by the scientific merits of an article. For instance in Medicine among other factors the number of authors, the number of references, the article length, and the presence of a colon in the title influence the impact. Whilst in Sociology the number of references, the article length, and title length are among the factors.[29]