One of my articles which has accomplished numerous hits on my blog is http://drvidyahattangadi.com/why-bibliography-is-important-in-research/

Why citations are important in your research work?

The answer for this question is the fact that we are living in an information economy, in every research work of yours, your ability to allow readers quick access information is more important than the knowledge you present. Providing readers the ability to obtain the information is often more appreciated than the method through which it is obtained.

A citation is a way of giving credit to individuals for their creative and intellectual works that you utilized to support your research. It can also be used to locate particular source which helps in plummeting plagiarism. Citing or documenting the sources used in your research serves purposes such as

i) it allows you to gives due credit to the authors of the work or ideas which you incorporated into your paper

ii) it allows those who are reading your work to locate your sources

iii) in order to trace from where you got your ideas that you included in your paper.

It is ethical to cite your sources

Even if no one reads your article/paper/book but clicks the link they regard your honesty for showing appreciation and giving credit to the hard work of those who helped you out. Make it a practice to religiously cite your sources. You might feel that proper acknowledgement of sources might make you look dumb, yet, there are instances in Universities where PhD thesis have been turned down for the lack of inadequate and genuine citations. Please don’t be under wrong impression that your work goes unchecked by referees.

Non-citing the sources in your literature goes out to portray your academic dishonesty, and the potential snags of plagiarism. While accuracy is all important in any writing, the very act of looking up a reference for verification serves as an accuracy check. 

Citation makes you a better researcher

Some of the hallmarks of good research include attention to detail and the ability to distinguish outlines and make coherent connections with your own thought process. Honest citation practice portrays your reading habits. It shows your patience in reading variety of literature available on a topic while it also necessitates you to add many details, such as correct page numbers, the spelling of author names, and of course, the accuracy of facts that you are presenting in your own article or your thesis. This habit helps you becoming a detail-oriented researcher. As for the ability to spot trends and patterns, preparing a good bibliography trains you for this task which is crucial in scientific analysis.

Citation practice make you a good writer

We all researchers aspire to write elegant papers in which the style is as persuasive as the content and good acknowledgment habits build a strong foundation towards that goal. Citing specific sources for the various facts that we present removes the intellectual laziness, ambiguous thinking, and of course slack writing. A good writer will always write matter which can be substituted with specific sources. And, when you cite sources appropriately, you leave no question in your readers’ minds regarding your point. Furthermore, by citing, you can easily use precise language.

It is important to note that in the Academic Ranking of World Universities also known as Shanghai Ranking the parameter of citations a university has acquired attracts 30% of overall score. It looks at the role of universities in dispersing new knowledge and ideas.

It examines research weight by capturing the number of times a university’s published work is cited by scholars globally. In 2014, Thomson Reuters examined more than 50 million citations to 6 million journal articles, published over five years. The data are drawn from the 12,000 academic journals indexed by Thomson Reuters’ Web of Science database and include all indexed journals published between 2007 and 2011. The citations help to show how much each university is contributing to the sum of human knowledge. It shows whose research has stood out, has been picked up and built on by other scholars and, most importantly, it has been shared around the global scholarly community to push further the boundaries of our collective understanding, irrespective of discipline.

Well-presented bibliography shows your scientific knowledge

A bibliography is the compilation of the various sources that you have read and cited in your own manuscript, dissertation, book, etc. Thus, an extensive bibliography is naturally a sign of extensively read and well-informed researcher. It shows your deeper insights on the topic. It also improves your credibility as a writer.

Citation enables better substantiation of your work

Any piece of academic writing gets examined several times over before it finally makes it into print or onto a website. Whether one is a peer reviewer, editor, or editorial assistant whose job is simply to track down sources in the bibliography and make sure that the citations are exact. This helps your paper easily to be passed through the multiple rounds of editing with negligible criticism. 

I conclude my article with point on bibliography that it is the key element of a research/thesis which is used to judge the quality of the work done by the researcher.  Therefore, use up-to-date citations and cite your references scientifically. Please do not ignore the quality of bibliography. It exhibits your critical thinking, it proves you have read and understood your sources, it establishes your work as a valid source and you as a competent researcher, and it situates your study and topic in a continuing professional conversation. And finally, your bibliography might stimulate other researchers to carry on further work on your chosen topic of research.

It is an era of social media and the Internet is bustling with many blogs. Social media sites are full with links to blog posts on every subject under the sun. For any and every topic you find a few blog post out there. The question is whether researchers can cite contents from blogs?   Why citing is important for researchers? The answer to this question is that it is important to cite sources which they use in their research for several reasons; one most important is authenticity of citation and its relevance to the topic. A good source adds quality of the work conducted. The listing of sources is important for the referee and other reader’s information. To be a responsible scholar, he/she needs giving credit to other original work and acknowledge the source.  No researcher, author, academician can take credit for somebody else’s idea.

There is evidence that blog coverage of scholarly articles associates with increased visibility and impact. Unfortunately, there are a number of obstacles that might limit the use of blog posts as an altmetry source (altmetrics are metrics and qualitative data that are complementary to traditional, citation-based metrics). First, only a small percentage of articles are covered in blogs.

Second, the definition of “scholarly blogs” and the decision about which blog data to use is challenging. When relying on certain collective work and networks for blog data we miss the impact of articles covered by blogs outside the data collection range. The coverage problem is not specific to blogs, or even to altmetrics, but it extends to bibliometric (bibliometrics is statistical analysis of written publications, such as books or articles databases) which are also chosen as sources and to indexing.

Third, there is a lack of sustainability, in sense maintaining a certain level. While most peer-reviewed journals enjoy professional archiving and printed copies (with ISSN/ISBN numbers), blogs can close down or move without leaving a trace (except perhaps in archive.org and similar sites). For blog-derived data to be reliable, they need to be properly indexed and archived. Bloggers need to create more authenticity for their blogs.

What are the reasons to Trust Online Blogs? Blogs can provide readers with insider information. This means that many blogs are typically written by experts actually working within specific fields of interest. They are providing their readers with firsthand knowledge that can help guide the decision making process.

Blogs normally are written without restrictions. Industry writers typically have more freedom when choosing the types of blogs they write. They don’t usually have a chain of checks and re-checks before being published like online periodical pieces would have. Because of the nature of blogs, even the most controversial topics are given an outlet for discussion. Plus, blogs are usually informally written, allowing readers to easily relate to the language and message. This is perfect for writers looking to provide informative web content that their target audience can connect with and act on. Blogs are usually niche blog covering a specific area.

Blogs are frequently updated. This means that web sites that feature regular blog posts provide evolving information that remains relevant and useful. Site owners don’t want their readers to be turned off by stagnant sites that rarely change, so they put significant efforts into creating stimulating content that appeals to their audience. By doing so, blog writers provide their readers with up-to-date information that is relevant to what is happening in the world around them at any given time.

If a researcher wants to quote or interpret part of a blog post, he/she needs to create a reference to a particular specific post, although many blogs end up being outlets for personal opinions and ideologies to be shared, the fact remains that blogs also serve as legitimate sources of news and information from industry experts. Online blogs are clearly in great quantity, and the list just keeps growing every day.

The global increase and popularity of social media stimulates interest in the utilization of blogs for research purposes. There is, however, a significant lack of information about the manner and scope of blog used in certain areas of research. The fact that all of the big citation styles for instance APA which uses citation formats which not only cover newspapers and reports and web pages but also blogs. APA Style is a writing style and format for academic documents such as scholarly journal articles and books. It is commonly used for citing sources within the field of behavioral and social sciences. It is described in the style guide of the American Psychological Association. Therefore, it clearly suggests that researchers and authors CAN USE BLOGS FOR CITATION.

The Fourth International Conference on Grey Literature (GL ’99) in Washington, DC, in October 1999 defined grey literature as follows: “That which is produced on all levels of government, academics, business and industry in print and electronic formats, but which is not controlled by commercial publishers.” While purposefully searching for sources on a research topic, grey literature helps in providing a more comprehensive picture. It becomes necessary to search for this unpublished information due to publication bias. The meaning of publication bias is there are some studies that have negative or insignificant results and therefore they do not get published.

Conclusion of the topic: Can scholarly blogs be cited in research work? The answer is YES.

The Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), also known as the Shanghai Ranking, is a publication that was originated and compiled by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University to rank universities globally. This ranking has been conducted since 2003. It is conducted annually on well-thought and strategic parameters. The results are published by the Shanghai Ranking Consultancy. This is one of its kind ranking.

The Chinese Government backed this ranking to provide a global benchmark against the various universities in China – this they did to assess their progress. The aim of the ARWU is for Chinese universities to do some hardcore and path breaking research in the area of science. The efforts taken by the Chinese Government in the area of higher education is praiseworthy.

The Academic Ranking of World Universities is considered one of the three most influential and widely observed international university rankings, in addition to the QS World University Rankings published by British Quacquarelli Symonds using the pre-existing methodology and innovative cooperation between Times Higher Education and Thomson Reuters.

While we look at strengths, weaknesses cannot be hidden either. The ARWU is criticized for its heavy focus on the natural science more than the social sciences or humanities and its explicit focus on research more than the quality of instruction.

The ranking consists of the following parameters:

International outlook: People, research (7.5%)

This category looks at diversity of students on campus and to what degree academics collaborate with international colleagues on research projects – both of these elements show how global an institution is in its outlook. The ability of a university to attract undergraduates and postgraduates from all over the world is the key to its success. The top universities also compete for the best faculty from around the globe. So in this category the aspect of international faculties is also given importance. The other indicator in this category is of the proportion of a university’s total research journal publications that have international co-authors. This parameter clearly shows importance of global approach that needs to be adopted by an institution.

Research: Volume, income, reputation (30%)

This category is made up of three indicators. The most prominent one is looking at a university’s reputation for research excellence among its peers. This category also looks at university research income, scaled against staff numbers and normalized for purchasing-power parity.
This is a contentious indicator because it can be influenced by national policy and economic wellbeing in a country. But, this indicator looks at the will of a University to spend money on research to increase its capability and thus considers that this is valid measure. Data is gathered to take account each university’s distinct subject profiles, reflecting the fact that research grants in science subjects are often bigger than those awarded for the social sciences, arts and humanities research. The research environment category also includes a simple measure of research productivity – research output scaled against staff numbers. The number of papers published in the academic journals indexed by Thomson Reuters is given lot of credibility. This gives an idea of an institution’s ability to get papers published in quality peer-reviewed journals.

Citations: Research influence (30%)

A citation is a reference to a published or unpublished source. More precisely, a citation is an abbreviated alphanumeric expression fixed in the body of an intellectual work that denotes an entry in the bibliographic references section of the work for the purpose of acknowledging the relevance of the works of others to the topic of discussion. This parameter attracts 30 percent of overall score. It looks at the role of universities in spreading new knowledge and ideas.

It examines research weight by capturing the number of times a university’s published work is cited by scholars globally. In 2014, Thomson Reuters examined more than 50 million citations to 6 million journal articles, published over five years. The data are drawn from the 12,000 academic journals indexed by Thomson Reuters’ Web of Science database and include all indexed journals published between 2007 and 2011. The citations help to show how much each university is contributing to the sum of human knowledge. It shows whose research has stood out, has been picked up and built on by other scholars and, most importantly, it has been shared around the global scholarly community to push further the boundaries of our collective understanding, irrespective of discipline. The ranking excludes any institution that publishes fewer than 200 papers a year to ensure that it has enough data to make statistically valid comparisons.

Citation helps referencing – it’s a way to give credit to the writers from whom scholars borrow words and ideas. By citing the work of a particular scholar students can acknowledge and respect the intellectual property rights of that researcher. A student/academician can draw on any of the millions of ideas, insights and arguments published by other writers, many of whom have spent years researching and writing. All that is needed is to acknowledge their contribution in newer building assignments.

Industry income: Innovation (2.5%)

A university/institute must essentially help industry with innovations, inventions and consultancy; it is its core mission. This category seeks to capture such “knowledge transfer” by looking at how much research income an institution earns from industry; it is scaled against the number of academic staff it employs. Industry income earned by innovation suggests the extent to which businesses are willing to pay for research and a university’s ability to attract funding in the competitive commercial marketplace.

It is a practical indicator of institutional quality. The Universities need to align education and research to meet the rising needs of industry and main concerns of the nation. The industry-academia interface must go to review the curriculum and pedagogy to ensure that they are pertinent and contemporary for the industry.

Teaching: The learning environment (30%)

This category employs five separate performance indicators designed to provide a clear sense of the teaching-learning process environment of each institution from both the student and the academic perspective. The teaching and learning category looks at staff-to-student ratio.
Where there is a healthy ratio of students to staff, the former will get the personal attention they require from the institution’s faculty. The teaching category also examines the ratio of doctoral to bachelor’s degrees awarded by each institution. It determines that institutions with a high density of research students are more knowledge-intensive and that the presence of an active postgraduate community is a marker of a research-led teaching environment valued by undergraduates and postgraduates. The doctorate-to-bachelor’s ratio is taken into consideration. The teaching category also uses data on the number of doctorates awarded by an institution, scaled against its size as measured by the number of academic staff it employs, as well as giving a sense of how committed an institution is to nurturing the next generation of academics, a high proportion of postgraduate research students also indicates the provision of teaching at the highest level that is thus attractive to graduates and effective at developing them.

Undergraduates also tend to value working in a rich environment that includes postgraduates. This indicator is normalized to take account of a university’s unique subject mix, reflecting the different volume of doctoral awards in different disciplines. The final indicator in the category is a simple measure of institutional income scaled against academic staff numbers.

This figure is adjusted for purchasing-power parity so that all nations may compete on a level playing field indicating the general status of an institution that gives a broad picture of the infrastructure and facilities available to students and staff.

Indian Universities/Institutions need to adhere to the global standards. The rankings parameters are usually based on tough standards. Only, Punjab University appears in the World University Rankings in the top 400 universities list for 2013-14. Although India has 42 central universities, 285 state universities, 130 deemed universities and 125 private universities, barely 3 or 4 of them are appreciated worldwide. Like Chinese Government backed Academic Ranking of World Universities to provide a global benchmarking for their universities for improving the educational standards, when will India raise its status?

According to a Times of India report based on QS BRICS 2014 University Rankings published on Tuesday, 29^th July 2014, India is the only country among BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) that couldn’t find a place in its top 10 list. Barring Russia, all other nations in the group are developing countries and newly industrialized States. A low ranking for Indian universities among these five nations brings down status of India in the world. India needs to immediately streamline its educational policies to showcase its strengths in research and development. However tough the parameters of ranking might be, we need a strong policy framework in place to augment our educational levels. Let’s stop underestimating the importance of quality education.