Can you have too many citations in a paper?

If you have too many references, readers may wonder if you did any original research at all. Unless you're writing a literature review, your paper's primary focus should be on your investigation and findings. Don't bury your hard work under strings of citations and discussion regarding other works.

How many citations is too many for a research paper?

A typical journal article is 7–8K words; a review or survey article a bit longer at 10–12K words. Within that word limit, you'd normally aim for no more than 25–30 references for the paper (less than 2 A4 pages worth) and maybe up to 45–50 for the review article (a note or letter may have as few as 5–10).

What happens when you get too many citations?

Not only does citation overkill impact the readability of an article, it can call the notability of the subject into question by editors.

Is it bad to have too many in text citations?

According to the APA Manual, 7th edition, overcitation (or too many in-text citations for the same source) can be "distracting and unnecessary" (p. 254).

Is 100 citations good for a paper?

Remember that the number of citations for professional, scientific research papers will be drastically different. An average professional peer-reviewed article you can find in Google Academy will have at least 25 sources and up to 100 citations.

Endnote: two or more in-text citations in the same set of brackets

How many citations is impressive?

With 10 or more citations, your work is now in the top 24% of the most cited work worldwide; this increased to the top 1.8% as you reach 100 or more citations. Main take home message: the average citation per manuscript is clearly below 10!

What paper has the most citations ever?

The most-cited paper in history is a paper by Oliver Lowry describing an assay to measure the concentration of proteins. By 2014 it had accumulated more than 305,000 citations. The 10 most cited papers all had more than 40,000 citations.

How much citing is too much?

Using too many references does not leave much room for your personal standpoint to shine through. As a general rule, you should aim to use one to three, to support each key point you make. This of course depends on subject matter and the point you are discussing, but acts as a good general guide.

Is it possible to cite too much?

Undercitation can lead to plagiarism and/or self-plagiarism. Overcitation can be distracting and is unnecessary. For example, it is considered overcitation to repeat the same citation in every sentence when the source and topic have not changed.

How many citations is too many?

My "rule of thumb" has always been to use a maximum of three references to support a particular statement. The role of a literature review is to provide a targeted review of the literature. In my view, there are several reasons why it is wise not to use too many references: It really disturbs the flow of the paper.

How do you know if you re using too many sources in your research paper?

One way to gauge how many references you should have is to survey academic journals for your article type in your field. Review their author guidelines for limits on the number of references for your article type, and make sure your reference list complies with those journal restrictions.

What does it mean if a paper is cited a lot?

As some have pointed out that the paper is of interest to many so gets cited many times. This could be due to many reasons. The paper might have made an important point, and described a 'break-through' observation or a trendsetter so others in the field can follow. These are perfectly normal.

Can you get marked down for too many references?

Do not worry about using referencing too often. As a general rule, it is better to use the references too often than not enough. This does not refer to the number of different authors/texts, but the frequency of citing those authors. It should be high-frequency overall.

How many citations does the average professor have?

The successful professors' most cited papers from this period received, on average, over 1000 references. For the non-successful professors, the number was closer to 60.

Is it good to have a lot of citations?

The more citations you have, both in the form of publications you have authored and references to your publications by others, the better off you are. The power of citations drives the ranking of scientific journals based on their impact factor.

Is 500 citations good?

For me having 500 citations is good, but reaching 1,000 citations is superb.

Is a highly cited paper good?

Citations are increasingly seen as a good measure of the impact of your research, so more citations would suggest a good paper. That said, citations are purely quantitative and depending on the metric often take no allowance of quality.

How many citations for average paper?

For example, if we take the average number of citations per paper, by adding up each paper's citation count and dividing it by the total number of papers, we get 7.8 citations per paper.

What is a good h-index for a professor?

h-index scores between 3 and 5 feel common for new adjunct professors, scores between 8 and 12 fairly standard for creation to the position of tenured associate professor, and scores between 15 and 20 about right for coming a full professor.

Is 100 citations a year good?

In general, a publication cited more than 400 times should be considered a classic; but in some fields with fewer researchers, 100 citations might qualify a work..

What is a good h-index for a journal?

What is a Good H-Index? Hirsch reckons that after 20 years of research, an h-index of 20 is good, 40 is outstanding, and 60 is truly exceptional.

Can one bad reference stop you getting a job?

Prospective employers highly value information that indicates the quality of your performance in past positions, and one way they learn about this is through professional references. Although you may perform well in other parts of a job interview, a bad reference can impact your chances of securing a position.

Why is Turnitin flagging all my references?

When Turnitin flags areas in your paper that are references, citations, or direct quotes, it doesn't necessarily mean that you have done something wrong. It's important to remember that Turnitin is just a tool that checks for similarities and matches.

Is 40 references too much?

There's no right or wrong answer answer as to how many references you need – it depends on how many you've cited in your writing! The most important thing is that you don't plagiarise. Make sure you include references for everything that you've cited in the text, so that it's clear where your information has come from.

How do you know if your paper is highly cited?

Highly Cited Papers are papers that perform in the top 1% based on the number of citations received when compared to other papers published in the same field in the same year.