Timeline for Why do journals have limits on the number of references?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
28 events
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| Jan 26 at 22:39 | history | edited | user438383 | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| S Jan 26 at 21:46 | history | suggested | CommunityBot | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jan 26 at 20:55 | review | Suggested edits | |||
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| Feb 15, 2016 at 0:28 | answer | added | paul garrett | timeline score: 1 | |
| Sep 3, 2015 at 7:14 | comment | added | Marc Claesen | I am extremely frustrated by these kinds of policies, which unfortunately are common in the journals and conferences that I submit to. Typically the limits are enforced as maximum X page(s) of references. These restrictions serve absolutely no purpose whatsoever. Gratuitous references would get caught during review and then removed. I have found myself in several situations where citing all relevant literature was simply impossible due to these ridiculous restrictions. Ironically, in most of these cases the reviewers then get mad because their paper happened to get cut from references. | |
| Jun 25, 2015 at 13:34 | comment | added | Willie Wong | @user3697176: the quote "strictly enforces" comes from the current guidelines (see fourth paragraph of section 5.4). The photograph is of the 1988 version which I said is "almost the same" (and not exactly the same) as the present day. | |
| Jun 25, 2015 at 11:08 | comment | added | user3697176 | Where do you get '"strictly enforces" a limit of 50 for articles and 30 for letters' out of the displayed photographs. I must have missed that. All I can read is "should". | |
| Jun 25, 2015 at 8:46 | history | edited | Willie Wong | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jun 25, 2015 at 8:38 | comment | added | Willie Wong | How exactly does this answer the question? Was there a sudden deluge of people submitting articles that look like encyclopedia entries? Is this something they cannot easily just deal with at the level of the managing editors without having an explicit number? | |
| Jun 25, 2015 at 8:33 | history | edited | Willie Wong | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jun 25, 2015 at 6:31 | comment | added | ScienceGuy59 | There is a limit because they don't want people submitting a research article that looks like the Encyclopædia Britannica. | |
| Jun 24, 2015 at 22:09 | comment | added | Jon Custer | Fair enough. I did focus on the lower limits mentioned for, e.g. Nature's letters (30), and Clinical Ontology (10 for correspondence). These types of papers really are different from a full-length research article. The letter journals (APL, PRL, ...) which got split out from their parent journals were supposed to be focused on one single topic which could be presented within the length limits. Clearly, Nature saw they needed to be specific - if you try to cover too much territory as evidenced by lots of references, your letter likely isn't very good by their standards. | |
| Jun 24, 2015 at 21:36 | comment | added | O. R. Mapper | @JonCuster: Admittedly, I find your reasoning a bit difficult to follow. References that are "not needed" (for understanding the article at hand, I presume) are not automatically something to remove, but something beneficial; they are an opportunity for interested readers to directly retrieve more information related to the article that these readers would otherwise have to search for themselves. Maybe things are somehow different for the letters you mention, but in general, as a reader, it seems contradictory to me that removing topically fitting references could improve a paper. | |
| Jun 24, 2015 at 15:45 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/#!/StackAcademia/status/613734813997133828 | ||
| Jun 24, 2015 at 15:39 | comment | added | Willie Wong | ...gratuitous citations. But I have edited my question one hour ago to be extremely specific (in line with the Stack Exchange preference for factual answerable questions): if the worries are gratuitous citations, what led to this worry? I invite you to re-read my previous comment. // As an aside I found your comments highly demeaning, and I thank you to stick to the facts and stop casting aspersions based on imaginary intent. | |
| Jun 24, 2015 at 15:36 | comment | added | Willie Wong | @JonCuster: Throughout this whole discussion you have asserted that they have their reasons. I have never disputed that. I don't feel strongly about the fact that journals have reference limits. I have never run against them and probably never will. I do, however, feel strongly about your comments which entirely mischaracterize my question and my motives. I refuse to believe, based on your words and your words alone, that journals instituted this policy just to help us write better. I am more inclined to believe that the journals instituted this policy because of problems of ... | |
| Jun 24, 2015 at 15:16 | comment | added | Jon Custer | Clearly you feel strongly about this. I'm not sure why. Also, clearly, certain journals feel the need to specify. The fact that you choose not to see any merit in the aspects I've mentioned indicates, to me, that you prefer to complain rather than attempt to understand. In the big picture, you should not expect the world to behave as you wish it to. They have their reasons, whether you acknowledge it or not. | |
| Jun 24, 2015 at 14:00 | history | edited | Willie Wong | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jun 24, 2015 at 13:44 | comment | added | Willie Wong | In fact, if most authors never exceed 20 references, a limit of 30 references is a solution in search of a non-existent problem. I am inclined to believe the policy was instituted because there actually was once a problem. The question is: what was it? Was there actually an observed upward creep in the number of references before the policy was instituted? Was there a big scandal concerning gratuitous references? Was there a famous complaint about the decline of the state of scientific writing? | |
| Jun 24, 2015 at 13:42 | comment | added | Willie Wong | @JonCuster: why are you so focused on APL and on letters? I note that APL doesn't currently have a limit on number of references at all; I used it as an example of a journal that has a limit on word count but not on reference count. Note also that Nature but not Science have a limit on the number of references for research articles. Clearly not every publisher perceives the reference limit for research articles as a necessity. | |
| Jun 24, 2015 at 13:38 | comment | added | Jon Custer | By its very nature, a letter should be highly focused. It is not a review article. The previous results of a few papers combined with several techniques lead to some good data with discussion pointing to a solid conclusion. I just looked through a sampling of some old APLs - I never exceeded 20 references. Why? To get my point across I did not need to. Any more would have been unnecessary, and there just wasn't room to discuss how 30 papers contributed to mine. And if you don't need to reference a paper, than it is gratuitous. If you do need to, your paper will be longer than a letter. | |
| Jun 24, 2015 at 13:32 | comment | added | Willie Wong | @JonCuster To be more precise: what is accomplished by an explicit limit on references that is not accomplished by strict page limits of the old APL or the strict word limits that are already in place for most of the journals I mentioned above? | |
| Jun 24, 2015 at 13:27 | comment | added | Willie Wong | @JonCuster: "The journals that have decided on reference limits have done so with a conscious decision for a reason... From your comments below you do not see their side of it at all." That's why I asked the question. If you do see their side, educate me, please? | |
| Jun 24, 2015 at 13:24 | comment | added | Jon Custer | In the dark ages, APL had a hard three page limit - it had to fit in three pages so you learned to focus on the necessary, not the nice to have. Similarly, if you need more than 30 references for a Nature letter, frankly, you are doing something wrong. The reason good writing is hard is that you have to throw out everything that is not really really really needed. The journals that have decided on reference limits have done so with a conscious decision for a reason. That you do not agree with it is probably not their concern. From your comments below you do not see their side of it at all. | |
| Jun 24, 2015 at 13:07 | comment | added | Cape Code | would anyone support a motion to limit the number of authors? Yes | |
| Jun 24, 2015 at 13:04 | history | edited | Willie Wong | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jun 24, 2015 at 12:43 | answer | added | dionys | timeline score: 9 | |
| Jun 24, 2015 at 11:36 | history | asked | Willie Wong | CC BY-SA 3.0 |