Citation
Overview
Citation (인용, quotation/citation) refers to the act of using another person's work, statements, or data to support one's own claims or descriptions while explicitly stating the source. Citation is a basic ethic of knowledge production and a mechanism for maintaining trust in the academic community, and it is also a limited exception of free use permitted under copyright law. Whether the form (quotation marks, footnotes, references, etc.) and procedure (source attribution) are properly observed is the key criterion that separates citation from plagiarism.
Main Content
Definition and Scope
In the narrow sense, citation refers to direct quotation (direct verbal quotation), which reproduces sentences from the original text verbatim; in the broad sense, it also includes indirect citation, in which the content of an original work is summarized or paraphrased while the source is disclosed. In academic writing, both methods are collectively called "citation," and direct quotations often require quotation marks along with precise page information.
Types of Citation
- Direct quotation: A method of reproducing the original text without modification. It should be short, and quotation marks, source, and page must be specified.
- Indirect quotation (paraphrasing): A method of reconstructing the original argument in one's own language. Even if the expression differs, the source of the idea must be disclosed.
- Self-citation: Citing one's own previous research. It is necessary to explain academic continuity, but excessive self-citation can become problematic as duplicate publication or research inflation.
- Secondary citation: Re-citing content cited in another document without directly examining the original. In principle, checking the original is recommended.
Citation Formats
Representative citation styles include APA (psychology and social sciences), MLA (humanities), Chicago (history and publishing), IEEE (engineering), Vancouver (medicine), ISO 690, and the Korean standard KS X ISO 690. Citation notation largely consists of in-text notation (author-date style, footnote/endnote style) and a reference list at the end of the document. In recent years, listing DOI and URL together has become standard practice.
Copyright and Citation
Article 28 of the Korean Copyright Act stipulates that "a published work may be quoted for the purpose of news reporting, criticism, education, research, etc., within a legitimate scope and in a manner consistent with fair practice." For quotation to be permitted, the following are required: ① the purpose of the quotation must be legitimate, ② the subject of quotation must be a work that has already been published, ③ the quoted portion must be clearly distinguished by quotation marks, etc., ④ the amount quoted must not exceed a legitimate scope, and ⑤ the source must be specified. The four factors of fair use in the United States and the quotation exception provisions of the EU share the same framework.
Boundary between Citation and Plagiarism
Copying the same sentence while omitting quotation marks and the source constitutes plagiarism, and even if the expression is changed, failing to disclose the source of the idea is also regarded as plagiarism. Conversely, proper citation is both a means of avoiding plagiarism and a device that enhances the credibility of argumentation. In recent years, paper similarity detection tools (Turnitin, Copykiller, etc.) have been designed to recognize cited portions separately, continuing attempts to distinguish citation from duplicate publication.
Academic Function and Citation Metrics
Citation enables dialogue with prior research, reveals the genealogy of knowledge, and provides a path for verifying claims. Citation metrics quantify this characteristic, and representative examples include citation counts, the h-index, the impact factor (IF), and SJR. However, metrics-centered evaluation has produced side effects such as citation manipulation, abuse of self-citation, and "coercive citation," leading to discussions on research evaluation reform such as the DORA declaration.
Recent Trends
The biggest change in 2024–2025 is the issue of AI-generated text and the credibility of citations. As "hallucinated citations," in which large language models plausibly fabricate non-existent literature, are repeatedly reported in journal submissions and educational settings, journals are requiring authors to actually verify citations, and some publishers have stipulated an obligation to disclose AI use.
At the same time, the Open Citations movement has spread, with I4OC, Crossref, OpenAlex, DataCite, and others providing citation data through open APIs, popularizing citation network analysis. Researchers use management tools such as Zotero, Mendeley, and EndNote and DOI-based automatic bibliography generation as standard workflows, and since 2023, research on "citation intent," which analyzes even the context of citations, has been developing in combination with generative AI.
Institutionally, Clarivate and Elsevier continued to remove a number of journals from their indexes between 2023 and 2025 on the grounds of anomalies in citation manipulation and self-citation rates, and in Korea as well, an increasing number of universities are adding provisions on "accuracy of citation" and "disclosure of AI use" to their research ethics regulations. In education, there is a clear movement to reorganize citation education from a focus on plagiarism prevention to a focus on information literacy and source verification skills.
Related Topics
- [[Plagiarism]]
- [[Copyright]]
- [[References]]
- [[Academic Paper]]
- [[Citation Index]]
- [[Research Ethics]]