Private acts and public objects: An investigation of citer motivations

Abstract Citation analysis has been used as a method for evaluating scholars and their impact. Evaluative citation analysis has been employed without a clear understanding of why authors give references and in the absence of any empirical work investigating citer motivations. The debate over the validity of evaluative citation analysis derives from the competing theoretical models used to describe the citer's motivations. Current models describing citer motivations were analyzed in this article and the seven most significant citer motivations identified. These seven citer motivations were presented to 26 authors at the University of Iowa each of whom had recently published an academic article. The authors indicated their motivations for giving each reference in their articles. As a result, the motivational background for more than 900 citational acts were gathered and analyzed.