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Citation analysis as a method for studying scientific communication is frequently criticized for being based on biased citation practices. Questionable motives for the reference selection have been suggested including the claim that authors tend to cite hot papers in order to show-off. In this study, the authors investigate the claim that authors tend to cite the recent literature in order to show-off.

Following Moed and Garfield (2004), the authors investigate the claim by analyzing the proportion of recent references as a function of the length of the reference lists of citing papers. The authors analyze reference lists of citing papers in the fields of biomedical engineering, economics, medicine, psychology and library and information science between 2010 and 2019. From each of these fields, a number of journals are included in the analysis to represent the field. In total, 42 journals are included in the analyses comprising a selection of almost 65,000 journal articles. The proportion of recent references is calculated using two citation windows. The proportion of recent references as a function of the length of the reference lists is calculated through simple linear regressions to predict the share of recent references based on the number of references.

The results of the linear regressions indicate that in most cases, there are a statistically significant relationship between the share of recent references and the number of references. This study’s results show that when authors display selective referencing behavior, references to the recent literature tend to be only marginally increased, and some results even display the opposite tendency (marginally overciting the older literature).

This study of the claim that authors tend to cite the recent literature in order to show-off does not confirm the hypothesis.

A new approach for investigating the correlation between research quality and citation counts is presented and applied to a case study of the relationship between peer evaluations reflected in scholarly book reviews and the citation frequencies of reviewed books. Results of the study designate a J‐shaped distribution between the considered variables, presumably caused by a skewed allocation of negative citations. The paper concludes with suggestions for further research.

The purpose of this research is to examine the practical potentials of Bradford's law in relation to core‐journal identification.

Literature studies and empirical tests (Bradford analyses).

Literature studies reveal that the concept of “subject” has never been explicitly addressed in relation to Bradford's law. The results of two empirical tests (Bradford analyses) demonstrate that different operationalizations of the concept of “subject” produce quite different lists of core‐journals. Further, an empirical test reveals that Bradford analyses function discriminatorily against minority views.

Bradford analysis can no longer be regarded as an objective and neutral method. The received view on Bradford's law needs to be revised.

The paper questions one of the old dogmas of the field.

The current debate between two theoretical approaches in library and information science and knowledge organization (KO), the cognitive one and the sociological one, is addressed in view of their possible integration in a more general model. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Personal knowledge of individual users, as focused in the cognitive approach, and social production and use of knowledge, as focused in the sociological approach, are reconnected to the theory of levels of reality, particularly in the versions of Nicolai Hartmann and Karl R. Popper (three worlds). The notions of artefact and mentefact, as proposed in anthropological literature and applied in some KO systems, are also examined as further contributions to the generalized framework. Some criticisms to these models are reviewed and discussed.

Both the cognitive approach and the sociological approach, if taken in isolation, prove to be cases of philosophical monism as they emphasize a single level over the others. On the other hand, each of them can be considered as a component of a pluralist ontology and epistemology, where individual minds and social communities are but two successive levels in knowledge production and use, and are followed by a further level of “objectivated spirit”; this can in turn be analyzed into artefacts and mentefacts. While all these levels are relevant to information science, mentefacts and their properties are its most peculiar objects of study, which make it distinct from such other disciplines as psychology and sociology.

This analysis shows how existing approaches can benefit from additional notions contributed by levels theory, to develop more complete and accurate models of information and knowledge phenomena.