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Literature practices represent the process leading up to the citation of a source, and consist of the selection, reading and citing of sources. The purpose of this paper is to explore possible factors that might influence researchers during this process and discover possible consequences of researchers’ citation behaviours.

In this exploratory study, various factors which could influence literature practices were explored via a questionnaire amongst 112 researchers. Participants were first authors of articles published in 2016 in one of five different journals within the disciplines of experimental psychology, educational sciences and social psychology. Academic positions of the participants ranged from PhD student to full professor.

Frequencies and percentages showed that researchers seemed to be influenced in their literature practices by various factors, such as editors suggesting articles and motivation to cite. Additionally, a high percentage of researchers reported taking shortcuts when citing articles (e.g. using secondary citations and reading selectively). Logistic regression did not reveal a clear relationship between academic work experience and research practices.

Seeing that researchers seem to be influenced by a variety of factors in their literature practices, the scientific community might benefit from better citation practices and guidelines in order to provide more structure to the process of literature practices.

This paper provides first insights into researchers’ literature practices. Possible reasons for problems with citation accuracy and replicating research findings are highlighted. Opportunities for further research on the topic of citation behaviours are presented.

Theoretical explanations for the diverse reactive feedback from secretarial employees in different career phases are relatively unexplored. However, research examining age differences in the impact of feedback suggests that the effects of performance feedback may differ for employees in the early career phase and employees in the late career phase. This paper aims to address this issue.

This contribution reports an experimental study on feedback perceptions and attribution by 173 secretarial employees of 12 Dutch organizations. Each participant responded to one of eight scenarios, which varied in terms of feedback content, sender status, and sender performance appraisal. Feedback perceptions were measured in terms of perceived fairness, acceptance, usefulness, willingness to improve and affect. An additional scale measured attribution.

The results reveal that elaborated specific feedback is perceived as more adequate, irrespective of feedback sender status and appraisal. Complex three-way interaction effects were found for educational level on affect and attribution, and for career phase on willingness to improve and affect. Low-educated employees reacted more strongly to supervisor feedback. Employees in the late career phase were more oriented towards the content of the feedback than feedback sender status, whereas the latter was of more concern for employees in the early and middle career phase.

In order for feedback to be considered as adequate, it is necessary to formulate the feedback as specific and as elaborated as possible. Employees in their late career phase especially react differently in comparison to employees in early and middle career phases. They are more inclined “to opt for quality” and appreciate elaborated feedback from a high experienced sender. Human resource managers should be aware of this in their policy towards employees in their late career phase

The present study shows that feedback content and sender characteristics (status and performance appraisal) differentially affect feedback perceptions and attribution. In addition, the study reveals that perceptions and attributions of performance feedback might be mediated by educational level and career phase.