In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader asks:
What's the purpose of citations in papers?
I'm having trouble determining the line between over-citing and losing my tone (and risk just saying what other people are saying) but also under-citing (but feel like I'm doing something wrong).
I want to make nods to the literature and earn my way into a conversation through citations - but often, there just aren't people saying exactly what I'm saying and I lose my reader when I try to manipulate citations to fit my project.
Any thoughts would be helpful on people's views of citing other work in philosophy papers!
Good question. I've made my own views on this clear before: I think (A) the purpose of citations is to provide an accurate scholarly record of relevant work that has appeared before yours on a given topic, and (B) under-citation is a bigger problem than over-citation.
Against (A), I've heard some say that they only cite works that actually influenced them. However, I think this clearly misunderstands the purpose of citations, as it presupposes that there are no normative requirements on what constitutes sound scholarship. If one doesn't read the literature and you then publish a paper saying, "I'm the first to give argument X" when other people have given that argument before, but you don't cite any of it because you didn't read it and it didn't influence you, you've done something wrong. You've misrepresented the scholarly record, presenting yourself as providing a novel contribution that isn't novel (you've reinvented the wheel). This is why, in all scientific disciplines, one is expected to begin with a literature review. Yet, in philosophy, I've routinely seen scholars (both junior and senior) give examples on social media of their work not being cited by someone who gives a very similar argument several years later. I've also seen cases as a referee where people haven't cited anything after the year 2000 on a topic, even though there's a ton of work relevant to their argument. Although one obviously cannot read everything, one does have an obligation to be generally aware of what is out there and do due diligence in determining whether someone has given your argument (or something close to it) before. Of course, mistakes may be made, and you may miss something. But if your work cites widely, you've at least shown good-faith effort--whereas if you only cite a small number of sources and a simple PhilPapers search reveals that some of the top results for a keyword search on your topic provide arguments similar to your own that you don't cite, then I think that's a problem.
But these are just my thoughts. What are yours?
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