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Comment: citation shortcomings: peccadilloes or plagiarism?

Article Excerpt
Citation shortcomings seldom become a burning issue among scholars. One possible reason is the difficulty of studying the problem. While it is relatively straightforward to assess whether the words and letters in citations are correct, it is far more difficult to determine whether authors have correctly chosen and used sources.

Wright and Armstrong show one way to do this: examine the presence or absence of citations to a particular source known to be essential--in their case, Armstrong and Overton (1977)--and, when it is present, assess whether it has been correctly interpreted and implemented. This exemplary study reveals near-universal neglect or misuse of a relevant source.

Another approach is to know the sources in a field comprehensively and to assess all the citations of papers in the field to look for both omissions and inappropriate inclusions. MacRoberts and MacRoberts (1989) used this method...

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