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In scholarly publications, citations play an essential epistemic role in creating and disseminating knowledge. Conversely, the use of problematic citations impedes the growth of knowledge, contaminates the knowledge base and disserves science. This study investigates the presence of problematic citations in the works of business ethics scholars.

The authors investigated two types of problematic citations: inaccurate citations and plagiarized citations. For this, 1,200 randomly selected citations from three leading business ethics journals were assessed based on: (1) referenced journal errors, (2) article title errors and (3) author name errors. Other papers that replicated the same title errors were identified.

Of the citations in the examined business ethics journals, 21.42% have at least one error. Of particular concern are the citation errors in article titles, where 3.75% of examined citations have minor errors and another 3.75% display major errors – 7.5% in total. Two-thirds of minor and major title errors were repeatedly replicated in previous and ensuing publications, which confirms the presence of citation plagiarism. An average article published in a business ethics journal contains at least three plagiarized citations. Even though business ethics fares well compared to other disciplines, a situation where every fifth citation is problematic is unacceptable.

Business ethics scholars are not immune to the use of problematic citations, and it is unlikely that attempting to improve researchers' awareness of the unethicality of this behavior will bring a desirable outcome.

Identifying that problematic citations exist in the business ethics literature is novel because it is expected that these researchers would not condone this practice.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate course instructor perceptions into personal and classroom use of computer‐generated bibliographic citations. The paper aims to provide guidance as librarians promote and teach automated citation services to the academic communities.

Course instructors at one university completed a quantitative survey about computer‐generated bibliographic citations. Questions focused on instructor use of automated citation services, if they generally reduce grades for bibliographic errors, if they would reduce grades for specific computer‐generated citation (CGC) errors, and would they advise students to use automated citation services at various course levels.

The results show a majority of course instructors do not use CGCs for their own research or promote the citation services in the classroom. A majority of respondents generally reduce student grades for bibliographic errors and would continue to do so for CGC errors. The data show specific types of automatically generated citation errors are more detrimental to student grades than others. Furthermore, results indicate course level impacts instructor promotion of CGCs.

The results provide librarians with helpful data, from the course instructor perspective, as they promote and teach computer‐generated bibliographic citations.

Literature on computer‐generated bibliographic citations tends to focus on technical and comparative aspects of citation services, or users' product opinions. This paper explores course instructor use, course promotion, and bibliographic grading of automatically generated citations to enhance advocacy and instruction of these services.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the accuracy and functionality of a selection of basic Android and iOS apps for mobile devices designed to generate bibliographic citations.

A number of inexpensive or free apps were installed on several different tablets and phones. Book citations in MLA and APA format were generated and evaluated for accuracy.

Results show that the majority of the apps tested produced unacceptably inaccurate citations, and many had limited functionality. The best of the apps tested was EasyBib.

There are infinite combinations of operating systems, apps, citation styles, material types and devices. Testing for this study was limited to uncomplicated apps likely to appeal to undergraduate students. It did not include more sophisticated apps for managing reference libraries. The study investigated how well several Android and iOS apps installed on mobile devices functioned to generate MLA and APA citations for print books.

As the role of mobile technology in education continues to grow, librarians need to remain aware of solutions that can help students manage their research. Librarians have an opportunity to provide feedback to developers by reviewing and rating apps.

Undergraduate students face challenges in learning to appropriately acknowledge materials they have consulted in their research and writing. Librarians can play an important role in helping students select the most appropriate tools to make citing sources easier and more accurate.

The verification of bibliographic information in a known item search can be both lengthy and tedious. The difficulties in using some of the traditional sources are well‐known. For example, the National Union Catalog provides access only through main entry; Books in Print and the Cumulative Book Index have author, title, and subject access but are limited by the fact that they cover only books either in print in a given year or published in a given year. The result can be a frustrating and, at times, fruitless search.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the citation error rate and quality of reference lists in doctoral dissertation proposals. This research also sought to examine the relationship between perfectionism and frequency of citation errors and the adherence of the reference list to the fidelity of the chosen citation style among doctoral students. Also of interest was to determine which demographic variables predict citation errors and quality of the reference list.

Participants were 64 doctoral students from various disciplines enrolled in a graduate‐level, dissertation preparatory course at a large southeastern university in the USA.

Findings indicated that graduate students with relatively high levels of self‐oriented perfectionism and other‐oriented perfectionism tended to commit the least citation errors and construct reference lists that departed the furthest from the citation style stipulations. Participants’ dissertation proposals, on average, contained more than 12 missing or inconsistent citations. This indicated that for every three citations included, one of them represented some type of error. Regression analyses revealed that: students with the lowest expectation levels tended to commit the highest rate of citation errors; and students who have taken the most courses in their graduate programs tended to receive the lowest scores pertaining to the quality of reference lists.

These findings suggest a need for more formal and more deliberate approaches for all instructors to instill in students the importance of avoiding citation errors.

To date, no research has investigated the role that perfectionism plays in relation to the commission of bibliographic citation errors.

The purpose of this study is to have a closer look at the awareness of referencing utilities among the library professionals in India. In a research environment, referencing and bibliography play an important role in the dissemination of research findings through scholarly writings. Citing references while writing scholarly articles has become more eloquent mainly due to the availability of a range of bibliography management utilities. Currently, there are various types of Bibliography Management Software (BMS) available for the management of the citation, referencing and compiling bibliographies. Librarians have a crucial role to play in helping the faculty, students and research scholars in the process of writing their scholarly articles and theses, especially in the area of referencing.

The study was conducted through an online survey with an aim to assess the perception, awareness and use of BMS by the Library and Information Science (LIS) professionals in India.

In the academic environment, published results of research findings are crucial for the advancement of knowledge. The published research findings are often supported and disputed using the citation of previous studies. There are a number of supporting technologies that are intended to help in procuring needed citations and streamlining them for better research output. The role of the librarian in this endeavor is undisputed. This study shows that there is a need for strengthening the awareness of BMS at the institutional level and also hands-on experience is needed for library professionals to help in the process of research writing and advocate for adopting correct referencing style (citation style) while writing scholarly articles.

The increased use of information and communication technology in the process of scholarly writing, especially in the search and retrieval of relevant articles and the availability of electronic journals and books, have resulted in an increased number of research articles being written by research scholars. The downside to this overflow of scholarly and creative writing is the incorrect way of using referencing style in the dissemination of research and the possibilities of malpractice and plagiarism. This study will help in creating awareness of the utility of citation and BMS in content writing, especially among library and information professionals, as they play an important role in facilitating research.

This study will be beneficial for the LIS professionals in understanding the effectiveness of their services when complemented by the use of technology-powered tools. Creating awareness of the use of BMS in content development in scholarly communication promises to create a flawless scholarly output as library professionals will help researchers in guiding research writings with correct referencing and citation.

Use of BMS helps in the development of content in an organized, methodical and scientific way. The role of library and information professionals working with different researchers and scholars in advocating and practicing the use of BMS will go a long way in creating more streamlined content.

This paper aims to determine the percentage of reference errors and type of errors in four library and information science (LIS) journals.

Research articles from issues published in 2007 were selected for analysis. The references were compared to online freely available tables of contents. The errors identified were categorised into six elements: journal title; author(s); article title; publication year; volume; and page numbers.

The highest percentage of reference errors was 49.1 percent (Information and Management). The overall error rates were: author (56 percent), page number (22 percent), article title (15 percent), volume (3 percent), publication year (2 percent) and journal title (2 percent).

The tables of contents (ToCs) used to compare the article references may not have correctly recorded the article details. Not all journal references could be reviewed as not all journal ToCs are available online. This one year, 2007, may not accurately reflect the citation accuracy of the journal in other years. This study did not differentiate between errors that would prevent the location of the article and those that could still be located with perseverance.

Error rates in these LIS journals are considerable. The current method of authors being responsible for the references is not resulting in accurate bibliographic information.

Based on the findings, possible solutions are suggested that could improve the accuracy of references.

This study aims to examine human resource development (HRD) research as represented by the citations to the publications in the four journals sponsored by the Academy of Human Resource Development (AHRD) from 2005 to 2011.

The authors collected citation data from Google Scholar (GS) using Publish or Perish 3 (PoP3) and compared the four journals on the metrics of h, hc, g, e and other Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) commonly reported indexes.

Citation data during the seven-year period provided an overall picture on the status of HRD research and publications. It showed that while HRD journals have made impressive research impact by generating worldwide scholarly citations in multiple languages, additional effort in improving the quality and the impact of research and publications is needed.

This study offers new insights on a number of important issues related to HRD research assessment, research quality, journal impact and editorial performance.

This is an initial effort in the HRD literature that comprehensively analyzes and compares the four AHRD journals. It offers new insights on the assessment of HRD research and journal impact.

The focus of the citation analysis reported is the information exchange between the Danish library‐information profession and LIS communities in other countries. Consideration is given to the diffusion of ideas and innovations from foreign countries into the Danish LIS world. Citation evidence is also used to shed light on structural characteristics of the LIS periodical literature and other communication media and some of the communication patterns characterising the LIS field in Denmark. The raw material for the citation analysis was gathered by the manual citation counting method and not drawn from computerised citation databases. The fact that a surprisingly large proportion of the references cited by Danish LIS authors belong to the so‐called ‘hidden’ category — denoting cited references embedded in the text of journal papers — is noted as a key finding. The observation on the considerable number of ‘hidden’ citations is developed further. Journals and books (monographs) are the publication formats most frequently relied on by LIS authors. It was found that the majority of the citations are to relatively recent materials. Next to Danish material, publications in English and produced in the United States and in Great Britain are those most heavily relied on by the Danish LIS community. Ranking of journals by number of citations shows that a very small number of journals accounts for the majority of journal citations. On the whole, the works cited point to a definite interest in public libraries and issues relating to the planning, structure and legislation of public libraries. Works on research and academic libraries and on theoretical aspects of LIS did not attract the same amount of citations.

In the past few years two methods of information access using the citations given in published papers have been developed. These methods are citation indexing and bibliographic coupling, and although they are closely related it is important clearly to distinguish between them. In essence, bibliographic coupling is a concept developed by M. M. Kessler of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, concerned with the relation existing between two documents by virtue of their joint descent from a third—that is, two documents are said to be coupled if they both cite the same document, and the strength of the coupling is determined by the number of citations they have in common. We are here primarily interested in citation indexing and will therefore only discuss Kessler's work as it becomes immediately relevant to this subject. A citation index is ‘an ordered list of cited articles each of which is accompanied by a list of citing articles. The citing article is identified by a source citation, the cited article by a reference citation. The index is arranged by reference citations.’ It is helpful at this stage to think of the source citations as descendants, and the reference citations as their ancestors.