Referencing through history: how the analysis of landmark scholarly texts can inform citation theory

Responding to Ton van Raan's critique of citation theories, this article explores referencing in landmark scientific texts for clues to a viable citation theory. The evolution of the modern bibliographic reference is described, the earliest form being authors commenting on other authors or themselves. Landmark scientific texts by Aristotle, Newton, Lavoisier, Darwin, and Einstein are examined for their referencing practice. The frequency distribution of author names mentioned in their texts conforms to the usual skewed distribution we find in reference analysis of modern scientific papers. Biographical background is given to explain why individual authors cited or failed to cite relevant prior work, and evidence is found for the emergence of a citation norm in the course of their careers. This norm is shown to support an author's claims to priority. The explanation of the differential or skewed distribution of citations may lie in the susceptibility of certain texts or authors to distinctive linguistic labeling which facilitates the adoption of this usage in the broader community. Copyright , Beech Tree Publishing.