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It’s not just about distributing credit where it’s due
The sociologist Robert Merton wrote perceptively about citations:
"[T]he institutionalized practice of citations and references in the sphere of learning is not a trivial matter. [Readers] located outside the domain of science and scholarship may regard the lowly footnote or the remote endnote or the bibliographic parenthesis as a dispensable nuisance .. [But] these are in truth central to the [academic] incentive system and an underlying sense of distributive justice, that do much to energize the advancement of knowledge"
Yet the significance of citations goes far beyond energizing and rewarding scientific and academic competition, and for PhDers and early career...
