The Psychology of Referencing in Psychology Journal Articles

Citation statistics can affect major professional decisions, but little is known about how important a particular reference is to the citing document. We asked 49 psychologists to rate the importance of every reference in their own empirical paper and to indicate the primary citation reason. References cited for conceptual ideas or to justify methods and data analyses were regarded as more important than references cited for general background, limitations, or future research. The location, frequency, and length of a citation predicted its importance, but such relationships were weaker for self-citations. We make suggestions about referencing for authors, editors, and bibliographic database designers.