Please only include those that are relevant to your research topic.

This could vary widely. It would depend greatly on the topic and how much work has been done in that area and related areas.

This isn't something you should determine after writing the paper. It results from the research you do for your paper.

Best wishes.

In management, most journals use from 2 to 3 reviewers. In some exceptional cases, I had to deal with 5 reviewers, but such cases are, again, extremely rare. Not sure about the other disciplines. It is totally up to the AE/EIC how many reviewers to pick. In the same journal, different AEs may have different preferences, so it is not uniform across the same journal. But this is not something you need to worry about as an author.

The increasing number of references in scientific journal articles suggests editors may prefer articles with higher no. of valid references although there are limitations in some journals. There are some researches also in this regard...

Articles in first position in a journal issue are found to have more references. Researchers also may prefer articles with many references. Two hypotheses are proposed to explain this preference: 1) If references represent the adequacy of review of relevant literature (an explanation "internal" to science), then the number of references per page will affect citations. 2) If references directly influence readers' judgment of quality (an explanation "external" to science), then the total number of references will affect citations. Regression analysis of articles in sociology supports hypothesis two. References may affect citations to an article; references per page do not. The ideal number of references in a sociology article is estimated at sixty-six.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/27698567?seq=1

Dear Bidhan K. Mohapatra, this certainly depends on the field of research. As far as I now there are no restrictions as to the number of references. However, always try to limit the references to those which are really relevant to the reported work. Make sure that important contributions of the pioneers in the field are cited. Also try to include the most recent references. Quite often you can limit the number of references by including citations of review articles and adding "and references cited therein" at the end of the citation. Of course I can only talk about our field of research (chemistry), but I can say that most of our original research papers have ca. 20-50 references, just to give you an idea. Attached in an Open Access paper as a typical example.

It largly depends on the journal specifications.. Its important to adhere strictly to authors guide

There are no restrictions or limits for citations or referencing in the bibliography section of your manuscript.

If a statement of fact is made at any point in your write up, a citation much be made in order to authenticate or validate that fact. If a citation is made in the body of the manuscript, it is only logical that it should be referenced in the bibliography section. Your manuscript is as credible as the number of quality citations referenced & the novelty of your result.

PS: The golden rule of publication is to avoid plagiarism by proper citations where applicable.

Note: Intellectual property theft is a serious crime in academics. It is just like treason in a political setting