Just picked this report up from the World Futurist Society’s email newsletter today. A new National Science Foundation (NSF) sponsored study suggests that while more scholarly journals are available online, researchers are actually citing less references, and focusing on newer references. U. of Chicago sociologist James Evans suggests that this trend may limit the creation of new ideas and theories.
I wonder though whether this study published in the July 18, 2008 issue of Science is probably the case in scientific research and less the case in the humanities.
With a burgeoning quantity of primary source material and published material becoming digitized and made available on the Web through folks like Google, the Internet Archive, and subscription databases, it seems like references and bibliographies are a lot longer, not shorter. But then again, I’m generalizing, since it really depends very much on the topic in question, and the coverage of the topic. Take for example, a few of the latest biographies on Thomas Jefferson I’ve cataloged this year have references that run in the tens of pages, and some constituting as much as 10-20% of the page count.
I wonder whether the era of Twitter and blogging, the nature of online publishing is such that getting ideas out quickly results in less emphasis placed on getting every last reference nailed down, let alone finding enough time to do an exhaustive literature search. The published book that seals the deal for that tenure process might, but perhaps the perception is not the case for the online audience?
