The DOI matches its Crossref record; 1 of the 1 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Cited Documents as Concept Symbols
Abstract
An interpretation of citation practice in scientific literature is offered which regards citation of a document as an act of symbol usage. By examining the language of the text around the footnote number the particular idea the citing author is associating with the cited document may be determined. the document is viewed as symbolic of the idea expressed in the text. This analysis was done for a sample of very highly cited documents in chemistry. A high degree of uniformity is revealed in the association of specific concepts with specific documents. These documents may be seen, in Leach's terms, as 'standard sym bols' for particular ideas, methods, and experimental data in chemical science. Some implications of these findings for the social determination of scientific knowledge (conceived as a dialogue among citing authors on the 'meaning' of earlier texts), and the relationship between cited documents as concept symbols and Kuhn's exemplars, are discussed.
Overview
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
In the citing paper
“Small (1978) conceptualized cited papers as concept symbols but did not distinguish the knowledge these symbols carry.”
From From citation intent to knowledge contribution: Classifying what cited papers actually contribute (2026) · cites this paper as Small (1978)
Citations
Cites
Nigel Gilbert, G. (1977) · Social Studies of Science · doi:10.1177/030631277700700112 · Cited by 691
Cited by
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Bornmann, L., & Daniel, H. (2008) · Journal of Documentation · doi:10.1108/00220410810844150 · Cited by 1,607
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Aksnes, D. W., Langfeldt, L., & Wouters, P. (2019) · Sage Open · doi:10.1177/2158244019829575 · Cited by 1,257
Leydesdorff, L. (1998) · Scientometrics · doi:10.1007/bf02458391 · Cited by 347
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BAZERMAN, C. (1985) · Written Communication · doi:10.1177/0741088385002001001 · Cited by 279
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Hjørland, B. (2013) · Information Processing & Management · doi:10.1016/j.ipm.2013.07.001 · Cited by 244
Hargens, L. L. (2000) · American Sociological Review · doi:10.2307/2657516 · Cited by 211
On the shoulders of Robert Merton: Towards a normative theory of citation
Small, H. (2004) · Scientometrics · doi:10.1023/b:scie.0000027310.68393.bc · Cited by 183
Self-citationZhang, G., Ding, Y., & Milojević, S. (2013) · Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology · doi:10.1002/asi.22850 · Cited by 169
Core Elements in the Process of Citing Publications: Conceptual Overview of the Literature
Tahamtan, I., & Bornmann, L. (2018) · Journal of Informetrics · doi:10.1016/j.joi.2018.01.002 · Cited by 149
Dong, Y. R. (1996) · Research in the Teaching of English · doi:10.58680/rte199615303 · Cited by 113
Towards an Automated Citation Classifier
Garzone, M., & Mercer, R. E. (2000) · Lecture Notes in Computer Science · doi:10.1007/3-540-45486-1_28 · Cited by 101
Random thoughts on citationology its theory and practice
Garfield, E. (1998) · Scientometrics · doi:10.1007/bf02458396 · Cited by 96
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Afandizadeh, S., Abdolahi, S., & Mirzahossein, H. (2024) · Journal of Advanced Transportation · doi:10.1155/2024/9981657 · Cited by 64
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Cronin, B. (1982) · Social Science Information Studies · doi:10.1016/0143-6236(82)90001-1 · Cited by 54
The linguistic patterns and rhetorical structure of citation context: An approach using n-grams
Bertin, M., Atanassova, I., Sugimoto, C. R., & Lariviere, V. (2016) · Scientometrics · doi:10.1007/s11192-016-2134-8 · Cited by 50
Discovering discoveries: Identifying biomedical discoveries using citation contexts
Small, H., Tseng, H., & Patek, M. (2017) · Journal of Informetrics · doi:10.1016/j.joi.2016.11.001 · Cited by 47
Self-citationRiviera, E. (2015) · Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology · doi:10.1002/asi.23248 · Cited by 9
From citation intent to knowledge contribution: Classifying what cited papers actually contribute
Quan, Z., Liang, Z., Ma, M., Wei, J., Li, G., & Mao, J. (2026) · Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology · doi:10.1002/asi.70127
Metadata
- Authors
- Small, H. G.
- Venue
- Social Studies of Science
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 1978-08
- Volume
- 8
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 327-340
- ISSN
- 0306-3127
- 1460-3659
- Cited by
- 423
- References
- 1
- Language
- en
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
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