“Who Cares?” Defining Citation Style in Scholarly Journals by Vincas Grigas and Pavla Vizváry

<jats:p>This poster is presented by Vincas Grigas Vilnius University. Summary of abstract: Dr. Ian Malcolm from Jurassic Park once said, “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.” This applies to academic publishing because it has numerous citation styles (10,377 in fact) that cause confusion. Crossref, which registers digital identifiers, reported that only half its registered articles have reference lists. A study of 270 reputable journals showed that most don’t require a specific citation style, giving authors examples instead. APA was the next common style, with others like Vancouver, Harvard, Chicago following. Even unnamed citation styles often matched known styles like APA and Harvard, but with minor changes. Despite digital identifiers’ importance, only 41.1% of journals requested them from authors, yet 78.1% did include them. The citation style choices were influenced more by the journal’s scientific field and less by the country of origin.</jats:p>