{"id":3243,"date":"2020-11-13T14:43:14","date_gmt":"2020-11-13T14:43:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/?p=3243"},"modified":"2020-11-30T17:53:46","modified_gmt":"2020-11-30T17:53:46","slug":"phantom-references","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/phantom-references\/","title":{"rendered":"Cite Right – Phantom References"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Cite<\/a>According to Google Scholar, the following paper has been cited 1180 times, as of November 11, 2020:<\/p>\n

Van der Geer, J., Hanraads, JAJ., Lupton, RA. ([2000]2010). The art of writing a scientific article. Journal of Science Communication.<\/em> 163(2):51\u201359.<\/span><\/p>\n

Must be an important one, right? The problem is that there is no such article in that journal! The journal does exist<\/a>. Although there is a scholar called Van de Geer<\/a>, one letter short and in a different discipline according to his scholarly profile, no full text of such article can be found anywhere.<\/p>\n

How is it possible that there have been over a thousand scholars who cited a non-existent paper? Not speaking about the same amount of journal editors who never checked the validity of the reference? <\/span><\/p>\n

Is this a phantom article written by a ghost?
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\"citation<\/a><\/span>This particular phantom publication was discovered by Prof. Anne-Wil Harzing, famous for Publish or Perish,<\/a>\u00a0a popular software application we have used many times to locate, retrieve, and analyze citations, based on a variety of data sources, e.g., Google Scholar<\/a> and Microsoft Academic Search<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In fact, the citation shows up as an example to illustrate changes in reference style<\/a> in a style guide by Elsevier. In her article entitled The mystery of the phantom reference<\/a> Dr. Harzing presents how she tracked down the origin of the phantom reference and its citations, about 400 at that time, in Web of Science to find that papers citing it, about 90%, were in conference proceedings published in Procedia conference volumes. Analyzing the way the reference was cited, she discovered that the culprit was most probably a template, where the citation showed up, along with two others, as a sample citation in the reference section.<\/p>\n

In a follow-up article, The phantom reference and the propagation of error<\/span><\/span><\/a>, the Leng-researchers<\/a> pointed out that, additionally, several other citing papers seem to have copied references from previous papers without checking the referenced paper! One phantom reference, 1000+ citations!<\/span>\"\"<\/a>Inspired by Dr. Harzing’s advice for good academic referencing in 12 guidelines<\/a> published in 2001, here are our tips to cite the appropriate sources and cite them properly<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

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  1. Never copy someone else\u2019s references from another paper, see above example.<\/li>\n
  2. Always reproduce the correct reference by retrieving the original article, for example, by typing the title in quotes in QuickSearch<\/a>.<\/li>\n
  3. If you use citation manager software (RefWorks<\/a>, EndNote<\/a>, or Zotero<\/a>), check the software-generated citation against the article for inaccuracies.<\/li>\n
  4. Do not misrepresent the content of the reference, use it for what it is and not for your agenda.<\/li>\n
  5. Do not use \u201cempty\u201d references. Each article cited should have a matching in-text reference.<\/li>\n
  6. Make clear which statement the actual reference supports.<\/li>\n
  7. Use reliable sources – beware of predatory publishing.<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Sources from Rutgers University Libraries to cite right<\/strong><\/p>\n

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    QuickSearch<\/a>: Use the citation symbol in the record and select APA Style 7th edition.<\/p>\n