Detecting and analyzing missing citations to published scientific entities

Proper citation is of great importance in academic writing for it enables knowledge accumulation and maintains academic integrity. However, citing properly is not an easy task. For published scientific entities, the ever-growing academic publications and over-familiarity of terms easily lead to missing citations. To deal with this situation, we design a special method Citation Recommendation for Published Scientific Entity (CRPSE) based on the cooccurrences between published scientific entities and in-text citations in the same sentences from previous researchers. Experimental outcomes show the effectiveness of our method in recommending the source papers for published scientific entities. We further conduct a statistical analysis on missing citations among papers published in prestigious computer science conferences in 2020. In the 12,278 papers collected, 475 published scientific entities of computer science and mathematics are found to have missing citations. Many entities mentioned without citations are found to be well-accepted research results. On a median basis, the papers proposing these published scientific entities with missing citations were published 8 years ago, which can be considered the time frame for a published scientific entity to develop into a well-accepted concept. For published scientific entities, we appeal for accurate and full citation of their source papers as required by academic standards.

Automated summary

Proper citation is crucial for academic writing to accumulate knowledge and maintain academic integrity. This study proposes a method called Citation Recommendation for Published Scientific Entity (CRPSE), which utilizes cooccurrences between published scientific entities and in-text citations from previous researchers to effectively recommend source papers. A statistical analysis of missing citations in prestigious computer science conferences in 2020 reveals that 475 published scientific entities in computer science and mathematics lack proper citations. It is found that many entities mentioned without citations are well-accepted research results.