Quotation errors that are commonly found in research papers weaken the crucial role of references, thus threatening science quality.
For more on quotation errors and the role of references, visit here and here.
nXr is the only reference manager which supports you to avoid quotation errors in research manuscripts with a complete set of tools:
- Citation based on quotes and images besides article titles.
- Specification of the page numbers where cited quotes and images are in the referenced articles.
- Providing the citation intent for each citation.
- Linking the referenced article PDF automatically with each citation.
What makes these features great is that you can share all these with your reviewers who can view these side by side with the manuscript to validate the references.
Now, let’s discuss how you can do tasks 2 and 3 in nXr.iCite?
How to provide page numbers for the cited quotes?
In nXr.iCite, by selecting the citation content control in the document and clicking the “Citation Settings” icon (as shown in the image), you can provide page numbers in two ways: Relative and Exact.
In the case of Relative numbering, by ignoring real page numbering in PDF, you assume that its page number starts from “1”. Then you determine the page numbers where the cited quotes are located. Note that, many journal PDF page numbering starts from “1”, disregarding article order or numbering in the journal volume and issue.
In the case of Exact numbering, you specify the page numbers according to the page numbering provided by the journal.
How to specify citation context/intent in nXr.iCite?
You can specify citation context in two steps by clicking “Citation Settings”.
In the first step, you select any one option among three: Introduction/Background, Materials and Methods, and Result and Discussion. By doing this, you are defining the citation context/intent on a macro-level.
In the second step, you define the citation context/intent on a micro-level. Here, you can specify one of the following four intents (according to this article):
- Compare and Contrast: if the citing paper expresses similarities, differences to, or disagrees, with the cited paper.
- Motivation: if the citing paper is directly motivated by the cited paper.
- Extension: if the citing paper motivation is to extend the methods, tools, or data, etc. of the cited paper.
- Future: if the cited paper is a potential avenue for future work.
Why specifying quote page numbers, or citation intent are important?
Smith and Cumberledge recommended the inclusion of page numbers in the citation styles as a potential solution to minimize quotation errors. However, most of the journals don’t support such citation styles. Therefore, as an alternative, you can provide page numbers and then share them with the peer-reviewers through nXr.iCite.
By specifying citation intent, you clearly demonstrate that why a reference article is cited in the manuscript’s text. You also demonstrate to the reviewers that there is no redundant referencing which may be indicative of serious citation malpractices. Moreover, with the citation context information, reviewers can validate authors’ claims robustly in less time.
Doing these might feel more work on the top of complex research writing tasks. However, such meticulous referencing strengthens attention on the whole research procedure, facilitating better scientific thought process, analysis, and better research reporting (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5953266/). It may also reveal a researcher’s attention to detail at all levels of his/her research.