The Importance of Not Being Cited

This title comes from a 1973 paper in Current Contents by Eugene Garfield called “Uncitedness III—The Importance of Not Being Cited”. In there, Garfield talks about three reasons why papers may not be cited.

I. “the uncitedness of the mediocre, the unintelligible, the irrelevant, the eccentric.”

II. “the uncitedness of the meritorious but undiscovered or forgotten, the uncitedness of the ‘village Miltons’ of scientific research.”

III. “the uncitedness of distinction that comes to those whose work has become so well known (and presumably been previously so heavily cited) that one finds it at first tedious, then unnecessary, and finally actually gauche to cite such [authors] at all.”

Garfield discusses the conditions under which such Uncitedness III, as he calls it, might occur and examples of how different disciplines might reach that level. For example, in atmospheric science, most people use quasigeostrophic thinking without citing the originators of the theory (e.g., Charney, Phillips). If they do provide a citation, it is to Holton’s textbook, which is the most commonly used dynamics textbook.

So, here’s something to think about in your own discipline: When should work not be cited as being “common knowledge”? Or, should we aim for a science where there is no such thing as Uncitedness III?