Citation has a stranger history than any reference list lets on. The word began as a summons, Gibbon's footnotes moved because David Hume complained, and an article that never existed has been cited nearly 400 times. Here are twenty interesting facts about citation and referencing, each traced to its source.
EdCitation publishes this guide; we read every source on 3 October 2026. Citation trivia is worth repeating only if it can be checked, so an untraced story is called unconfirmed, and a story another of our guides tells in full links there.
Several facts share one lesson: people cite what they have not read. EdCitation's Find sources finds the original, Cite a source builds its reference from the publisher's record, and Verify references checks a finished list, all free. EdCitation never writes any part of anyone's work; it looks references up.
Twenty citation facts at a glance, with sources
| # | Fact | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Cite first meant to summon | Harper (n.d.) |
| 2 | Callimachus's tables of writers ran to 120 books | Suda On Line (2002) |
| 3 | Numbered verses began in a 1551 Greek New Testament | Williams (2018) |
| 4 | "Shoulders of giants" is older than Newton | Ashworth (2026) |
| 5 | Hume's complaint moved Gibbon's notes | Hume (1888) |
| 6 | An 1881 paper on slug eggs explained author-date citing | Mark (1881); Harvard Library (n.d.) |
| 7 | The first citation index served lawyers, from 1873 | Garfield (1955) |
| 8 | Chicago's manual dates from 1906, APA's rules from 1929 | University of Chicago Press (n.d.); Bentley et al. (1929) |
| 9 | Crossref's first links went live on 5 June 2000 | Crossref (2000) |
| 10 | One repository holds 10,865 citation styles | Zotero (n.d.) |
| 11 | The most cited paper is Lowry's 1951 protein method | Van Noorden et al. (2014) |
| 12 | No study shows 90% of papers go uncited | Remler (2014) |
| 13 | Some papers sleep for a century | Ke et al. (2015) |
| 14 | The Matthew effect was named in 1968 | Merton (1968) |
| 15 | The h-index dates from 2005 | Hirsch (2005) |
| 16 | "Publish or perish" was in print by 1942 | Garfield (1996) |
| 17 | A reference that never existed was cited nearly 400 times | Harzing (2017) |
| 18 | About one citer in five reads the original | Simkin and Roychowdhury (2003) |
| 19 | The spinach decimal point has no source | Rekdal (2014) |
| 20 | GPT-3.5 invented 55% of its references in one test | Walters and Wilder (2023) |
Where does the word citation come from, and how old is citing?
Citation began as a legal word, and pointing readers to other writers is far older than any style guide.
- Cite first meant to summon. The verb comes from the Latin citare, "to summon, urge, call". Citation meant a summons, a written notice to appear, from about 1300; it came to mean a quoted passage only in the 1540s (Harper, n.d.).
- An ancient catalogue of writers ran to 120 books. Callimachus of Cyrene compiled Tables of Men Distinguished in Every Branch of Learning, and their Works in 120 books, says the Byzantine encyclopaedia the Suda (Suda On Line, 2002). What survives is told in the oldest bibliographies.
- Verse numbers were made for comparing texts. Robert Estienne printed the first New Testament verse divisions like ours in his Greek New Testament of 1551, setting each number between the Greek and Erasmus's Latin to keep the columns aligned (Williams, 2018). His son said he made most of them on horseback between Paris and Lyon; that rests on the son's word alone.
- "Standing on the shoulders of giants" is older than Newton. Newton wrote it to Robert Hooke on 5 February 1675/76, but Robert Merton's 1965 book On the Shoulders of Giants traced it to medieval times, mocking how odd citations pass from author to author unchecked (Ashworth, 2026). Google Scholar's home page still says "Stand on the shoulders of giants" (Google, n.d.).
Who invented footnotes, author-date citation and the citation index?
No single person invented any of them, but each has a documented moment.
- Gibbon's notes moved because Hume complained. In April 1776 Hume told the printer William Strahan that the references in Gibbon's notes, printed at the end of the volume, belonged in the margin or at the foot of the page; the letters' editor found it followed in the third edition of 1777 (Hume, 1888). More in who invented the footnote.
- An 1881 paper on slug eggs explained author-date citing in a footnote. Edward Laurens Mark's study of Limax campestris, in the bulletin of Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology, put a year after each author's name, "informing him at once of the approximate date" of the paper (Mark, 1881). Harvard's library says its faculty were among the system's first users, and the name stuck (Harvard Library, n.d.). More in where Harvard referencing came from.
- The first citation index was for lawyers. When Eugene Garfield proposed a citation index for science in July 1955, his model was Shepard's Citations, serving the legal profession since 1873; he called his idea an "association-of-ideas index" (Garfield, 1955). More in the first citation index.
When did citation styles start, and how many are there?
The big styles are twentieth-century inventions, and one repository now lists over ten thousand.
- Chicago's style sheet went into a cornerstone; APA's rules filled seven pages. The University of Chicago Press placed its style book and style sheet in its new building's cornerstone in 1903; by 1906 the sheet had grown, through a pamphlet, into a 200-page Manual of Style costing 50 cents (University of Chicago Press, n.d.). APA's began in the February 1929 Psychological Bulletin, pages 57 to 63, under six names, Madison Bentley's first (Bentley et al., 1929). See the history of APA Style, and of MLA and Vancouver.
- Crossref started with 1.3 million records. On 5 June 2000 Crossref switched on its first reference links: ten publishers had sent more than 1.3 million article records from about 2,700 journals (Crossref, 2000). How the DOI was born tells the rest.
- There are more than 10,000 citation styles. The Zotero Style Repository's own list held 10,865 styles on 3 October 2026 (Zotero, n.d.). Only 2,864 define a format of their own; the other 8,001 are dependent styles, a journal's name over a parent style's format (Citation Style Language, n.d.).
What is the most cited paper, and are most papers never cited?
The most cited paper is a 1951 laboratory method, and most papers are cited: the famous 90% figure has no study behind it.
- The most cited paper exists because a colleague asked for it. Lowry and colleagues' 1951 protein method led the Web of Science with 305,148 citations in Nature's 2014 count; only 14,499 of some 58 million items had more than 1,000 (Van Noorden et al., 2014). Lowry's group published it only after Earl Sutherland complained about citing it as a "personal communication" (Lowry, 1977); more in the most cited papers of all time.
- "90% of papers are never cited" has no source. Remler (2014) traced it to an editor's opening line in a 2007 magazine article, picked up at a lecture. The studies she found put uncited rates at 12% in medicine, 27% in natural sciences, 32% in social sciences and about 82% in the humanities, where much research appears in books. Harzing (2025) calls high uncitedness an academic urban legend.
- Some papers sleep for a century. Ke et al. (2015) searched 22 million papers for "Sleeping Beauties", ignored for years and then suddenly cited. Karl Pearson's 1901 paper on lines and planes of closest fit slept for more than a century; Freundlich's 1906 paper on adsorption topped their list.
Who coined the Matthew effect, the h-index and "publish or perish"?
Merton named the first in 1968 and Hirsch proposed the second in 2005; who coined the third is unconfirmed.
- Famous scientists get more credit for the same work. Robert Merton (1968) called this the Matthew effect, after the Gospel verse in which those who have are given more, drawing on Harriet Zuckerman's interviews with Nobel laureates, who saw it work in their own favour.
- The h-index is one number from 2005. J. E. Hirsch (2005) defined it as the number of a researcher's papers cited at least that many times each, so 20 means 20 papers with 20 or more citations. Its limits are in do citation counts matter?
- "Publish or perish" was in print by 1942. Garfield (1996), chasing its origin, reported it in Logan Wilson's 1942 book The Academic Man, inside quotation marks that leave open whether Wilson coined it; Merton and others believed it was in fairly common use then.
How often are citations copied, invented or wrong?
Often enough to be measured, as these four facts show.
- A reference that never existed was cited nearly 400 times. Pieter Kroonenberg, a Dutch emeritus professor of statistics, found that "The art of writing a scientific article", credited to Van der Geer, Hanraads and Lupton, was an example made up for Elsevier's reference guidelines. The Web of Science listed nearly 400 articles citing it, most in one conference series (Harzing, 2017).
- About one citer in five reads the original. Simkin and Roychowdhury (2003) modelled how misprints spread through citations and estimated that only about 20% of citers had read the paper. It is a model's estimate, not a survey; I cited a source I did not read has the detail.
- The spinach decimal point is a myth about a myth. The story that a misplaced decimal point made spinach famous for iron spread through citations for decades. Rekdal (2014) followed them back and found no evidence the error ever happened; asked later, the author of the 1981 article it was cited to could not remember where it came from.
- Chatbots invent references. Walters and Wilder (2023) had ChatGPT write 84 short literature reviews: 55% of the GPT-3.5 references and 18% of the GPT-4 references were fabricated. Later tests are in what studies say about AI-fabricated references.
How do you check a citation fact before you repeat it?
Go back to the source, read the passage, and cite that, not the page that repeated it.
- Find the original. Search the claim or title in Find sources, across about 300 million published works.
- Build the reference from the record. Give the DOI, ISBN or title to Cite a source, which builds it in APA 7, MLA 9, Chicago 18 author-date, Harvard, IEEE or Vancouver and screens it for retraction.
- Read the passage. No tool does this for you.
- Say how sure you are. If a story stops at a secondary source, say so.
- Check the finished list in Verify references: each entry comes back verified, "check this" or not found, retracted papers are flagged, and "could not check" is never shown as not found.
Why use EdCitation to check what you cite?
EdCitation is, in our view, the best free tool for this job, because it looks every reference up in the publisher's record and never writes one. That is the check the phantom reference never got, and one no chatbot can do for itself, as fact 20 shows.
Cite a source, on works this guide names
On 3 October 2026 Cite a source took Garfield's DOI, 10.1126/science.122.3159.108, and returned:
Garfield, E. (1955). Citation indexes for science: A new dimension in documentation through association of ideas. Science, 122(3159), 108–111. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.122.3159.108
Merton's 1968 DOI and the 1929 APA article's, 10.1037/h0071487, came back as complete entries, the second naming all six authors; none was flagged as retracted. The ISBN 9780226520865 gave "Merton, R. K. (1993). On the shoulders of giants: A Shandean postscript. University of Chicago Press." The book record names no edition, so add by hand that this is the Post-Italianate edition, and "(Original work published 1965)".
Find sources, once
Find sources took "sleeping beauties delayed recognition in science", sorted by most cited, and returned 11,186 results: Ke and colleagues first, cited by 428, and ninth a molecular biology paper on the Sleeping Beauty transposase, which shares only the name. Read the title before you cite.
All three tools are free with no account. Pro, at $8 a month, adds References from a file, which checks every reference in an uploaded paper and matches each in-text citation to the list (pricing).
Quick questions
Who invented citation?
No one person. Edward Laurens Mark cited by author and year in 1881; Eugene Garfield proposed a science citation index in 1955, modelled on a legal one from 1873.
What is the most cited paper of all time?
Lowry and colleagues' 1951 protein method, with 305,148 Web of Science citations in Nature's 2014 count.
Are most academic papers never cited?
No. The 90% figure traces to an unsourced magazine line; Remler found uncited rates of 12% to 32% outside the humanities.
What is the origin of "publish or perish"?
The earliest use Eugene Garfield found was in Logan Wilson's 1942 book The Academic Man, already in quotation marks; the first user is unconfirmed.
Can EdCitation tell me whether a citation is real?
Yes. EdCitation's free Verify references marks each entry verified, "check this" or not found, and flags retractions.
References
- Ashworth, W. B., Jr. (2026, February 5). Isaac Newton. Scientist of the Day, Linda Hall Library. https://www.lindahall.org/about/news/scientist-of-the-day/isaac-newton-3/
- Bentley, M., Peerenboom, C. A., Hodge, F. W., Passano, E. B., Warren, H. C., & Washburn, M. F. (1929). Instructions in regard to preparation of manuscript. Psychological Bulletin, 26(2), 57–63. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0071487
- Citation Style Language. (n.d.). Primer: An introduction to CSL. https://docs.citationstyles.org/en/stable/primer.html
- Crossref. (2000, June 5). Crossref goes live: Journal reference linking service membership roster grows to 33 publishers [News release]. https://www.crossref.org/news/2000-06-05-crossref-goes-live-journal-reference-linking-service/
- Garfield, E. (1955). Citation indexes for science: A new dimension in documentation through association of ideas. Science, 122(3159), 108–111. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.122.3159.108
- Garfield, E. (1996, June 10). What is the primordial reference for the phrase "publish or perish"? The Scientist, 10(12), 11. https://garfield.library.upenn.edu/commentaries/tsv10%2812%29p11y19960610.pdf
- Google. (n.d.). Google Scholar [Home page]. Retrieved 3 October 2026, from https://scholar.google.com/
- Harper, D. (n.d.). Cite. In Online etymology dictionary. Retrieved 3 October 2026, from https://www.etymonline.com/word/cite
- Harvard Library. (n.d.). What is the Harvard system for citing references? Ask a Librarian. https://ask.library.harvard.edu/faq/81735
- Harzing, A.-W. (2017, November 8). The mystery of the phantom reference: A detective story. Harzing.com. https://harzing.com/blog/2017/11/the-mystery-of-the-phantom-reference-a-detective-story
- Harzing, A.-W. (2025, October 23). Myth busted: Most academic research does get cited [White paper]. Harzing.com. https://harzing.com/publications/white-papers/myth-busted-most-academic-research-does-get-cited
- Hirsch, J. E. (2005). An index to quantify an individual's scientific research output. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 102(46), 16569–16572. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0507655102
- Hume, D. (1888). Letters of David Hume to William Strahan (G. B. Hill, Ed.). Clarendon Press. https://archive.org/details/cu31924029078776
- Ke, Q., Ferrara, E., Radicchi, F., & Flammini, A. (2015). Defining and identifying Sleeping Beauties in science. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(24), 7426–7431. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1424329112
- Lowry, O. H. (1977, January 3). Citation Classic commentary on Protein measurement with the Folin phenol reagent. Current Contents, (1), 7. https://garfield.library.upenn.edu/classics1977/A1977DM02300001.pdf
- Mark, E. L. (1881). Maturation, fecundation, and segmentation of Limax campestris, Binney. Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard College, 6(12), 173–625. https://archive.org/details/bulletinofmuseum06harv
- Merton, R. K. (1968). The Matthew effect in science. Science, 159(3810), 56–63. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.159.3810.56
- Rekdal, O. B. (2014). Academic urban legends. Social Studies of Science, 44(4), 638–654. https://doi.org/10.1177/0306312714535679
- Remler, D. (2014, April 23). Are 90% of academic papers really never cited? Reviewing the literature on academic citations. Impact of Social Sciences, London School of Economics. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2014/04/23/academic-papers-citation-rates-remler/
- Simkin, M. V., & Roychowdhury, V. P. (2003). Read before you cite! Complex Systems, 14(3), 269–274. https://doi.org/10.25088/ComplexSystems.14.3.269
- Suda On Line. (2002). Kallimachos (Adler number kappa 227; M. Heath, Trans.). https://www.cs.uky.edu/~raphael/sol/sol-entries/kappa/227
- University of Chicago Press. (n.d.). About The Chicago Manual of Style. The Chicago Manual of Style Online. https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/help-tools/about.html
- Van Noorden, R., Maher, B., & Nuzzo, R. (2014). The top 100 papers. Nature, 514(7524), 550–553. https://doi.org/10.1038/514550a
- Walters, W. H., & Wilder, E. I. (2023). Fabrication and errors in the bibliographic citations generated by ChatGPT. Scientific Reports, 13, Article 14045. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-41032-5
- Williams, P. J. (2018, November 16). Where did verse numbers come from? Tyndale House. https://tyndalehouse.com/2018/11/16/chapter-and-verse/
- Zotero. (n.d.). Zotero style repository. Retrieved 3 October 2026, from https://www.zotero.org/styles