It is often recommended that in citing resources in support of your thesis or article that you refer to recent publications.
In your setting, what is your criteria for a recent source? Five years old? Ten years old? ....
This does not mean that you cannot refer to "old" sources, does it?!
In your setting, what is your criteria for a recent source? Five years old? Ten years old?
In my personal opinion - It depends on the research area & their research progress. E.g. high tech / ICT / applied science (shorter years) vs social science (comparatively longer years). Hot research topics might have shorter years of recent source vs less popular research topics that might attract longer years of sources etc.
This does not mean that you cannot refer to "old" sources, does it?
You can still refer to old sources especially those are classic ones i.e. already long time e.g. > 10 years but still have enormous impact / influence in a particular research area.
In my own setting they also recommend recent sources, 5 years old. When you cite an article that was published around the 1970s they start to doubt your research skills. Dispite the fact that recently published articles are recommended in research, some of those old articles are worth citing.
Hi, Muthana. The question is pertinent, but some important questions have to be established. The first thing is that we must always be updated and qualified in our field or research area, that is, to know the new discussions of your discipline. This is regularly carried to the investigation. The second is that we must consider that each disciplinary area is different. The medical areas for example generate many jobs and innovations constantly and that forces the researcher to be attentive to these updates. In social sciences it is different. In foliosophy, sociology or perhaps anthropology, the "classics are the classics" and are pillars for any theoretical discussion. The third thing is that the commercial dynamics of the production of knowledge, that is, the impact factor, only considers the citations of the last three years after having published the article, that means that many researchers in very critical areas ask their thesis students to quote the most recent.
Finally, everything will depend on the discipline and the type of research that is done and the discussion that is proposed. Perhaps for the hard sciences (physics, biology, mathematics or medicine) everything must be new and current, but for the social sciences, it is different. You can be working on a case study and that commits you to be very current or you can be discussing classic concepts where the bibliography will be classic.
Regards!
Good answers from Bahtilla and Cesar,
Five years tends to be the recommended 'rule of thumb' for current, topical primary studies that are drawing on the latest literature. If the topic has been 'out of vogue' for a few years and re-emerged, then one may have to go back further to say ten years. That would have to be clearly identified in the rigorous and robustly-reported literature search and critical appraisal process. In order to address the current topic 'state of affairs, it may be appropriate and necessary to go further back to the historical and seminal (origins) literature. This helps to map if current trends have moved on from the past position - or are cyclical. Again - if drawing upon such literature, it has to be reported and a rationale offered as to why.
In your setting, what is your criteria for a recent source? Five years old? Ten years old?
In my personal opinion - It depends on the research area & their research progress. E.g. high tech / ICT / applied science (shorter years) vs social science (comparatively longer years). Hot research topics might have shorter years of recent source vs less popular research topics that might attract longer years of sources etc.
This does not mean that you cannot refer to "old" sources, does it?
You can still refer to old sources especially those are classic ones i.e. already long time e.g. > 10 years but still have enormous impact / influence in a particular research area.
Very impressive discussion that provoked valuable and challenging comments from our RG colleagues
Sometimes you may find important information in reference X and reference X cite it from reference Y.
Which one You would cite?
It depends on the author style. Some authors are more honest and follow the source of the information which might lead to the 1970's for example.
In fact, most of published papers repeats ideas from older works in different shape or different context or even different topics. The more someone reads the more he/she can find repeated ideas. Then, what is the publisher want to see in order to accept a new paper??
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