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Research Seminar – why do authors cite material, and how do readers subsequently interpret those citations?

On Tuesday 28 October 2014, Professor Peter Willett of the Information School will be delivering a seminar on why authors cite material and how readers interpret those citations.

Citation context analysis is an area of bibliometrics that is based on the assumption that the readers of an article will understand why the original author cited a particular item.  This is only an assumption, and one that has never been tested in any detail.  The project to be described here involved the authors of ten library and information science articles providing the reasons for citing material in their articles.  These reasons were then compared with the reasons suggested independently by readers of those articles.

The results that were obtained suggest that readers are able to correctly perceive the authors’ reasons for citation only to a very limited extent.  As a result this questions the appropriateness of citation context analysis as a way of analysing the academic literature.

The seminar takes place at 13:00 in Information School lecture room RC-204 with refreshments beforehand at 12:30 in the iSpace.  All are welcome and booking is not required.

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