HOW WELL DO WE ACKNOWLEDGE INTELLECTUAL DEBTS?

Abstract

Authors of scientific articles often read a paper that fails to cite their prior work when they feel it should have. A survey of university faculty shows the extent to which such opinions abound. If justified, they reflect non-use of bibliographic search methods, their inadequacy or non-scholarly use of the result. Principles for the design of a new kind of automated or semi-automated document retrieval system are formulated. They are analysed and shown likely to improve the scholarly quality of scientific work as represented by the bibliographies in manuscripts reporting that work.