Dr. Michael Glick’s editorial, "You Are What You Cite: The Role of References in Scientific Publishing" (
JADA 2007; 138[1]:12–14[Free Full Text]
), which calls for authors to adequately and correctly assemble annotations in articles, contains a separate lesson for readers, albeit one only briefly alluded to in the editorial: scrutinize the citations as well as the narrative.
Advice to examine citations is especially sound—if complicated—for dentists in practice, who, focusing on clinical relevance, may be tempted when scanning a scientific article to bypass the sources, and even the processes, to look for results alone.
A scientific article typically fulfills two objectives. The first is to describe accurately the procedures followed and results observed. The second is to place results in perspective by relating them to existing knowledge and by interpreting results. References form an integral part of that perspective.
What’s more, neither research nor reviews should be consumed indiscriminately. Science and publication are both social processes. Citations do not merely mark the author’s thought processes, nor do they only demonstrate that some readily identifiable person has taken responsibility for the information published. As Dr. Glick intimates, the author’s selection of references reveals his or her biases.
Citations also can shed light on a variety of institutional influences. "Citations in scientific works—as a number of studies have shown—do far more than identify the originators of ideas and the sources of data," historian Anthony Grafton wrote. "They reflect the intellectual styles of different national scientific communities, the pedagogical methods of different graduate programs, and the literary preferences of different journal editors. They regularly refer not only to the precise sources of scientists’ data, but also to larger theories and theoretical schools with which the authors wish or hope to be associated."1
Products of a complex interplay of institutional norms and personal considerations, citations may constitute a network of public conversations among authors. Blaise Cronin wrote, "The publication process combines reward and recognition. The scientist is rewarded for his efforts by having publication status conferred on his work; that is, he or she receives the seal of approval of the scientific establishment, and those whose work he has cited in turn receive recognition for the part they have played in the development and furtherance of the citing author’s theories."2
Such conversations can, at times, distort the value of citations. Scientists are sometimes judged by the number of times their work is cited by others. Well-known authors may be cited more than others, not because the information they publish is more significant than that of other authors, but simply because they are well-known.3
Citation indexes, in which citations are tracked, intensify publishing’s dimension beyond disseminating information and have resulted in authors’ employing various stratagems to increase visibility.
Information technology philosophers John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid maintain that "documents do not merely carry information, they help make it, structure it, validate it."4 In the same sense, a scientific article is shaped and validated by its packaging. In many ways that JADA readers who are clinicians rather than scientists may not initially recognize, citations form a vital part of that packaging. Just as authors must take care to appropriately annotate their manuscripts, readers should learn to skillfully interpret the meanings in the citations.
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