Evidence of complex citer motivations

✍ Scribed by Brooks, Terrence A.

• Book ID: 101249394
• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1986
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 383 KB
• Volume: 37
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0002-8231
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1097-4571(198601)37:1<34::aid-asi5>3.0.co;2-0

✦ Synopsis

There were 20 scholars interviewed about their citation motives in recently published articles. Their 437 citations were scaled along 1 or more of the following 7 titer motives: currency, negative credit, operational information, persuasiveness, positive credit, reader alert, and social consensus. The majority (70.7%) of the references were attributed to more than 1 motive. Analysis of the clustering of the titer motives showed 3 groupings: (1) persuasiveness, positive credit, currency, and social consensus, (2) negative credit, and (3) reader alert and operational information. Negative credit references were often found to be used with a countervailing positive credit, currency, or social consensus reference. This is considered to be empirical evidence of MacRoberts and MacRoberts' [8] hypothesis that scholars dissemble when giving nega. tive references.