Chapter and Verse
From Variety to Uniformity in Scholarly Source Citation Practice
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18357/kula.304Keywords:
bibliographic documentation, source referencing norms, scholarly communication, bibliographic practices, bibliographic standardizationAbstract
Being provided with the source of a scholarly product (book, data, document, etc.) used in a published work is an important aspect of communication in the scholarly world because it allows the author’s peers to verify the results presented therein. Until recently, inconsistency, idiosyncratic practices, and a lack of explicit standards have been the dominant characteristics of the history of supplying bibliographic information for a publication mentioned. This essay uses Robert K. Merton’s (1910–2003) well-known paper “Science and the Social Order” (1938) as a case study to illustrate how “deficient” bibliographic referencing hampers the research process. The long-standing absence of norms regulating source referencing information was gradually reversed during the twentieth century, when sets of formalized and standardized rules were put into place and codified as the new millennium approached–especially with the advent of digital technology. This article examines the variegated ways in which bibliographic material was provided (or not) and suggests how a convergence of factors put an end to this “disorderly” bibliographic sourcing environment.
Downloads
Metrics
References
“Advancement at Aberdeen.” 1934. Time, September 17. EBSCOhost.
Agarwal, Ashok, Mohamed Arafa, Tomer Avidor-Reiss, Taha Abo-Almagd Abdel-Meguid Hamoda, and Rupin Shah. 2023. “Citation Errors in Scientific Research and Publications: Causes, Consequences, and Remedies.” World Journal Men’s Health 41 (3): 461–65. https://doi.org/10.5534/wjmh.230001.
Alighieri, Dante. (1321) 1933. La Divina Commedia. Gius. Laterza & Figli.
Bamford, C. H., J. D. Bernal, E. J. Buckler, V. M. Conway, M. C. A. Cross, R. C. Evans, D. W. Ewer, J. H. Fremlest, S. Glasstone, H. Godwin, B. E. Holmes, A. F. W. Hughes, E. Leighton Yates, E. R. Love, E. C. Macirone, D. M. Needham, J. Needham, D. P. R. Petrie, A. Pirie, D. Richter, E. B. Verney, and A. Walton. 1936. “Scientific Workers and War.” Nature 137 (3472): 829–30. https://doi.org/10.1038/137829b0.
Barnes, S. B., and R. G. A. Dolby. 1970. “The Scientific Ethos: A Deviant Viewpoint.” European Journal of Sociology 11 (1): 3–25. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003975600001934.
Barzun, Jacques, and Henry F. Graff. 1957. The Modern Researcher. Harcourt, Brace & World.
Barzun, Jacques, and Henry F. Graff. 2004. The Modern Researcher. 6th ed. Thomson/Wadsworth.
Bensman, Joseph. 1988. “The Aesthetics and Politics of Footnoting.” International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society 1 (3): 443–70. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01385430.
Blau, Peter M. (1964) 1986. Exchange and Power in Social Life. 2nd ed. Transaction Publishers.
Broad, William, and Nicholas Wade. 1982. Betrayers of the Truth. Simon & Schuster.
Charles, Enid. 1936. The Menace of Under-Population: A Biological Study of the Decline of Population Growth. Watts.
Chomsky, Noam. 1964. Current Issues in Linguistic Theory. Mouton.
Chubin, Daryl E . 1988. “Allocating Credit and Blame in Science.” Science, Technology, & Human Values 13 (1–2): 53–63. https://doi.org/10.1177/0162243988013001-207.
Cicero, Marcus Tullius. (44 BCE) 1960. Tusculan Disputations. Translated by J. E. King. Harvard University Press.
Connors, Robert J. 1998. “The Rhetoric of Citation Systems—Part I: The Development of Annotation Structures from the Renaissance to 1900.” Rhetoric Review 17 (1): 6–48. https://doi.org/10.1080/07350199809359230.
Crothers, Charles. 1987. Robert K. Merton. Ellis Horwood.
Darwin, Charles. 1959. The Autobiography of Charles Darwin. Edited by Nora Barlow. Harcourt, Brace.
Erikson, Martin G., and Peter Erlandson. 2014. “A Taxonomy of Motives to Cite.” Social Studies of Science 44 (4): 625–37. https://doi.org/10.1177/0306312714522871.
Finley, Moses I. (1963) 1987. The Ancient Greeks. Chatto & Windus. Reprint, Penguin Books.
Finnegan, Ruth. 2011. Why Do We Quote? The Culture and History of Quotation. Open Book Publisher. https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.12657/30311/646701.pdf.
Fisher, Ronald A. 1925. Statistical Methods for Research Workers. Oliver & Boyd.
Freckelton, Ian. 2016. Scholarly Misconduct: Law, Regulation, and Practice. Oxford University Press.
Friedman, Robert Marc. 2001. The Politics of Excellence: Behind the Nobel Prize in Science. W. H. Freeman Book, Times Books/Henry Holt.
Garfield, Eugene. 1977. “The ‘Obliteration Phenomenon’ in Science—and the Advantage of Being Obliterated.” In Essays of an Information Scientist, vol. 2. ISI Press.
Garfield, Eugene. 1996. “When to Cite.” The Library Quarterly: Information, Community, Policy 66 (4): 449–58. https://doi.org/10.1086/602912.
Gershwin, George, and Ira Gershwin. (1937) 1960. “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off.” In Music by George Gershwin. University Society.
Gilbert, G. Nigel. 1977. “Referencing as Persuasion.” Social Studies of Science 7 (1): 113–22. https://doi.org/10.1177/030631277700700112.
Gilbert, Judson B. 1941. “Notes on Medical Bibliographic Citation.” Bulletin of the Medical Library Association 29 (3): 131–40. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC233420/.
Grafton, Anthony. 1997. The Footnote: A Curious History. Harvard University Press.
Gregory, Richard. 1940. “Science and Humane Values.” In The Deeper Causes of the War and Its Issues, edited by Sydney Ernest Hooper. Allen and Unwin.
Hall, Daniel, J. G. Crowther, John. D. Bernal, V. H. Mottram, Enid Charles, P. A. Gorer, and P. M. S. Blackett. (1935) 1968. The Frustration of Science. With a foreword by Frederick Soddy. Book for Libraries Press.
Hogben, Lancelot T. 1937. Retreat from Reason. Random House.
Howell, John Bruce. 1983. Style Manuals of the English-Speaking World: A Guide. Oryx Press.
Hyland, Ken, and Feng (Kevin) Jiang. 2019. “Points of Reference: Changing Patterns of Academic Citation.” Applied Linguistics 40 (1): 64–85. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/amx012.
Kaempffert, Waldemar. 1933. “Stamp Suggests Curb on Invention: British Economist Advocates Better Balance to Aid Industry and Consumers.” The New York Times, September 9: 3. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
Kaltenbrunner, Wolfgang, Kean Birch, Thed van Leeuwen, and Maria Amuchastegui. 2022. “Changing Publication Practices and the Typification of the Journal Article in Science and Technology Studies.” Social Studies of Science 55 (5): 758–82. https://doi.org/10.1177/03063127221110623.
Kaplan, Norman. 1965. “The Norms of Citation Behavior: Prolegomena to the Footnote.” American Documentation 16 (3): 179–84. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.5090160305.
Kuhn, Ferdinand, Jr. 1934. “Stamp Urges Curb on New Inventions.” The New York Times, September 7: 7. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
Kuhn, Thomas S. (1962) 2012. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 4th ed. University of Chicago Press.
Laplace, Pierre Simon de. (1818) 1898. “Mémoire sur la figure de la terre.” In Œuvres complètes de Laplace, vol. 12. Académie des Sciences. Gauthier-Villars et fils.
Manchester, William, and Paul Reid. 2012. The Last Lion: Defender of the Realm, 1940–1965. 3 vols. Bantam Books Trade Paperbacks.
Marx, Karl. (1867) 1912. The Process of Capitalist Production. Vol. 1 of Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, edited by Frederick Engels. Translated from third German edition by Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling. Charles H. Kerr.
McCain, Katherine W. 2014. “Obliteration by Incorporation.” In Beyond Bibliometrics: Harnessing Multidimensional Indicators of Scholarly Impact, edited by Blaise Cronin and Cassidy R. Sugimoto. The MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/9445.003.0011.
Merton, Robert K. 1938. “Science and the Social Order.” Philosophy of Science 5 (3): 321–37. https://doi.org/10.1086/286513.
Merton, Robert K. 1942. “A Note on Science and Democracy.” Journal of Legal and Political Sociology 1 (1–2): 115–26. https://heinonline.org/HOL/P?h=hein.journals/jolegpo1&i=115.
Merton, Robert K. 1968. Social Theory and Social Structure. Free Press.
Merton, Robert K. 1983. Foreword to Citation Indexing, Its Theory and Application in Science, Technology, and Humanities, by Eugene Garfield. ISI Press. Originally published in 1979 by Wiley.
Merton, Robert K . 1984. “The Fallacy of the Latest Word: The Case of ‘Pietism and Science.’” American Journal of Sociology 89 (5): 1091–121. https://doi.org/10.1086/227985.
Merton, Robert K. 1993. On the Shoulders of Giants: A Shandean Postscript: The Post-Italianate Edition. University of Chicago Press.
Merton, Robert K. 1995. “The Thomas Theorem and the Matthew Effect.” Social Forces 74 (2): 379–422. https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/74.2.379.
Mills, Charles Wright, and Hans Heinrich Gerth. 1946. Introduction to From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, by Max Weber. Edited by C. Wright Mills and H. H. Gerth. Oxford University Press.
Modern Language Association. 2021. MLA Handbook. 9th ed. Modern Language Association of America.
Montaigne, Michel Eyquem de. 1965. The Complete Essays of Montaigne. Translated by Donald M. Frame. Stanford University Press.
“More Science or Less?—The Question Arises Again.” 1934. The Literary Digest, September 22: 16.
“Nature and Politics Between the Wars.” 1969. Nature 224 (5218): 465–66. https://doi.org/10.1038/224462a0.
Philosophy of Science. 2025. “Preparing Your Materials.” https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/philosophy-of-science/information/author-instructions/preparing-your-materials. Archived at: https://perma.cc/3A43-99RT.
Plato. 1999. Great Dialogues of Plato. Translated by W. H. D. Rouse. Signet Classics.
“The Protection of Scientific Freedom.” 1936. Nature 137 (3476): 963–64. https://doi.org/10.1038/137963a0.
“Science and Citizenship.” 1936. Nature 137 (3474): 883–84. https://doi.org/10.1038/137883a0.
Shon, Philip C. 2019. Cite Your Source. Sage Publications.
Singh, Ranjit, and Michael Lynch. 2025. “Proverbial Economies of STS.” Social Studies of Science 55 (3): 327–49. https://doi.org/10.1177/03063127241294038.
Small, Henry. 1980. “Co-Citation Context Analysis and the Structure of Paradigms.” Journal of Documentation 36 (3): 183–96. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb026695.
Stamp, Josiah. 1933. “Must Science Ruin Economic Progress?” In Report of the Annual Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Leicester, September 6–13, 578–83. Office of the British Association. https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/30565447.
Stamp, Josiah. 1934a. “Discussion on The Need for a Technique of Economic Change.” In Report of the Annual Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Aberdeen, September 5–12, 341–42. Office of the British Association. https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/96081#page/393/.
Stamp, Josiah. 1934b. “General Treasurer’s Account 1933–34.” In Report of the Annual Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Aberdeen, September 5–12, xxx-xxxi. Office of the British Association. https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/96081#page/34/.
Stamp, Josiah. 1937. The Science of Social Adjustment. MacMillan.
Stigler, Stephen M. 1978. “Laplace’s Early Work: Chronology and Citations.” Isis 69 (2): 234–54. https://doi.org/10.1086/352006.
Strachey, John. 1935. The Coming Struggle for Power. Modern Library.
Sweetland, James H. 1989. “Errors in Bibliographic Citations: A Continuing Problem.” The Library Quarterly: Information, Community, Policy 59 (4): 291–304. https://doi.org/10.1086/602160.
Thomas, William I., and Dorothy Swaine Thomas. 1928. The Child in America: Behavior Problems and Programs. Alfred A. Knopf.
University of Chicago Press. 2017. Chicago Manual of Style. 17th ed. University of Chicago Press. https://doi.org/10.7208/cmos17.
“War, Science and Citizenship.” 1936. Nature 137 (3471): 757–59. https://doi.org/10.1038/137757a0.
Weber, Max. (1918) 1946. “Science as a Vocation.” In From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, edited by Hans H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills. Oxford University Press.
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Dominic Lusinchi
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
