Are You There, Citations? It’s Me, Impact Factor

Articles in peer-reviewed journals often begin with a literature review, where authors establish credibility through their display of knowledge and justify their new research. In effective discussions, authors synthesize their results with related literature, expanding the utility of their work by identifying connections with other scholarly works. Citations to published works link concepts, ideas, technologies, results, and authors, creating a local web within a given article and dovetailing within a global web. Citations are breadcrumbs that facilitate navigation through a body of knowledge.

Performance measures, including author-level metrics like the H-Index and journal-level metrics like journal impact factors (JIFs), are based on citations. JIFs are increasingly being used to quantify the performance of journals. Measures like the H-Index and JIFs are employed by some institutions, hiring committees, and promotion and tenure committees, to evaluate the performance of researchers. Because the increased use of these measures has influenced citation practices, it is relevant to consider new obligations, best practices, and the ethics of citing well.

Dubious practices exist. Some research groups may cite their own work too prominently, perhaps because of a narrow familiarity with their own work but also to boost their own performance metrics. Some authors fail to cite seminal works believing that they are dated, but this fails to give credit where credit is due. Some may repeatedly cite references that they are familiar with, without performing new literature reviews for every new paper, thus failing to identify the most appropriate citations for a specific point in their work. More problematic are situations where authors omit relevant citations, perhaps because of competition with another research group, or sometimes because they don’t wish to call into question the novelty of their work-under-review.

Best practices are driven by empathy for readers and regard for the community of researchers. All participants in the publication process—authors, reviewers, editors—should ensure that new manuscripts contain a complete and coherent list of references. Citations should ensure the accurate assignment of credit for precedent ideas and contributions. Authors should place the same level of care into the selection of references as they do to all other parts of their manuscript, including thorough literature reviews to ensure the identification of salient references and the avoidance of omissions. The literature search should continue during the planning, writing, and revision of a manuscript. Authors should avoid citing papers with questionable methods or results in a manner that suggests that the results are valid, because such practices contribute to an illusory truth effect. Where appropriate, authors should show in what ways the questionable methods or interpretations fail to meet accepted scientific standards. Citations should never be included or excluded for nonscientific reasons.

In short, the best approach to citations is diligence and attention to detail during the entire research process, from initial planning through final review. Author- and journal-level metrics will come and go, but well-crafted papers with thoughtfully integrated citations will stand the test of time.