The context of multiple in-text references and their signification.

Area of Science:

• Bibliometrics
• Computational Linguistics
• Scientific Communication

Background:

• Sentences with multiple in-text references (MIR) are prevalent in scientific literature.
• Understanding the distribution and characteristics of MIR is crucial for analyzing research impact and citation practices.

Purpose of the Study:

• To analyze the frequency and position of MIR within the rhetorical structure of scientific articles.
• To investigate the syntactic patterns associated with MIR compared to single in-text references.
• To identify variations in MIR usage across different journals and sections of the IMRaD structure.

Main Methods:

• Analysis of a large-scale dataset comprising approximately 80,000 research articles from 7 Public Library of Science journals.
• Examination of MIR distribution across the Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion (IMRaD) sections.
• Syntactic analysis of sentence structures containing single and multiple in-text references.

Main Results:

• MIR are frequently observed in all sections of the rhetorical structure, notably comprising over half of all referenced sentences in the Introduction.
• Noun groups are the predominant syntactic structure for both single and multiple in-text references.
• The Methods section exhibits unique characteristics regarding the use of in-text references.

Conclusions:

• Multiple in-text references are a significant feature of scientific writing, distributed broadly across article sections.
• Syntactic patterns, primarily noun groups, are consistently employed in sentences with in-text citations.
• Further research into the rhetorical function and impact of MIR across different scientific disciplines is warranted.