In the process, they confer or withhold credit, contributing to the relative status of published work in the literature. On the one hand, citation practices create value by tying together relevant scientific contributions, regardless of whether they are large or small.
Citations link one study to others, creating a web of knowledge that carries meaning and allows other researchers to identify work as relevant in general and relevant to them in particular. A well-referenced manuscript places the authors’ argument in the proper knowledge context and thereby can support its novelty, its value, and its visibility. Writing manuscripts requires, among so much more, decisions on which previous studies to include and exclude, as well as decisions on how exactly that inclusion takes place. This leads to the question of how to decide which study or author to cite, and in what way. That difference can include literature we dispute or disprove, arguments or claims we expand, and new ideas, suggestions, and hypotheses we base upon published work. Through the inclusion of references, we demonstrate the foundation upon which our studies rest as well as how they are different from previous work. We researchers aim to read and write publications containing high-quality prose, exceptional data, arguments, and conclusions, embedded firmly in existing literature while making abundantly clear what we are adding to it. The funder had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Ĭompeting interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.įunding: The work that lead to this publication was, in part, supported by the ZonMW programme Fostering Responsible Research Practices, grant no. PLoS Comput Biol 14(4):Įditor: Scott Markel, Dassault Systemes BIOVIA, UNITED STATESĬopyright: © 2018 Bart Penders.
Citation: Penders B (2018) Ten simple rules for responsible referencing.
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