Survey on inadequate and omitted citations in manuscripts: a precursory study in identification of tasks for a literature review and manuscript writing assistive system

• Main Authors: Sesagiri Raamkumar, Aravind, Foo, Schubert, Pang, Natalie
• Other Authors: Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: 2016
• Subjects: Inadequate and omitted citations; Academic writing
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/84362; http://hdl.handle.net/10220/41792; http://www.informationr.net/ir/21-4/paper733.html
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Introduction.This paper looks at the issue of inadequate and omitted citations in manuscripts by collecting the experiential opinions of researchers from the dual perspectives of manuscript reviewers and authors. Method. An online survey was conducted with participation from 207 respondents who had experience of reviewing and authoring research papers. Analysis. The collected data were analysed quantitatively. Descriptive and bivariate analyses were performed. Results. Reviewer and author groups opined that manuscript authors fail to cite seminal and topically-similar papers, while the reviewer group indicated that authors include too few papers and cite irrelevant papers. The lack of experience was perceived as a major reason for inadequate and omitted citations, followed by lack of overall research experience and working in interdisciplinary research projects. Authors needed external assistance in finding papers for a literature review. Google Scholar was the most used system among the list of information sources. Conclusions. The findings may benefit subsequent studies conducted to solve the issue of inadequate and omitted citations through process improvements and technological interventions. The findings helped in identifying three tasks for a literature review and manuscript writing assistive system. The usage preferences on information sources helped in shortlisting Google Scholar's user-interface as a basis for the user-interface design for the assistive system.