Or, “the meaning of citations: what Garfield said he means in a bunch of articles vs. what people say he means and even worse what people do with his work” Christina Pikas:
As for the symbolic nature of citations – this goes to the heart of using citations to map knowledge. What can we say about paper A because it cites B, or about A and C if they both cite B? Citations as indicators that provide a formal representation of science – Wouters Reflexive Citation Theory. But look, we don’t know why the citation was useful to the author – maybe the context is, “what an idiot Pikas is, see for example Pikas (2008).” So according to the author, Wouter’s theory can’t handle that.
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