Journal word limits: "notes and references"

In our new "how can we help you?" thread, a reader asks:

This seems like it should be an easy question to answer, but I've had a surprisingly hard time figuring it out. If a journal says submissions should be no longer than 10,000 words, including notes and references, do the "references" here mean in-text references, or the actual reference/bibliography list at the end of the article? It would seem that including the full reference list in the word count would encourage under-citing, which is a problem. The particular journal I have in mind is Mind & Language, which makes this even weirder, since empirical-adjacent journals tend to have papers with more citations.

It means everything, bibliography included--and yes, it may encourage under-citing. Should journals rethink this kind of requirement, so as to omit bibliographies from word limits?

What do readers think?

Comments

[Michel]

Yes.

[Chris]

One reason many journals do this- they have a limited number of (physical) copy pages per issue (usually for cost reasons.) Of course this doesn't apply to on line journals, etc.