Thank you for your interest !

On ResearchGate (RG):

• “References” = the list of papers you used and cited in your own article (your bibliography). When you upload your paper, RG tries to read your PDF and pull those out automatically. But it’s not perfect — sometimes it misses a few because of weird formatting, missing DOIs, or if the journal name isn’t in RG’s system. That’s why you might see “42 references” listed in your paper, but only 34 show up as “linked” on RG.
• “Citations” = the number of times other people have cited your work in their own papers, preprints, theses, etc. This is the number most folks care about because it shows your impact. But fair warning: RG counts almost everything — including blog posts, preprints, and (unfortunately) some questionable AI-generated stuff. So your citation count on RG will usually be higher than on stricter databases like Scopus or Web of Science.

So to keep it super simple: References = what you read and cited Citations = who read and cited you

They’re totally different — like giving vs. receiving. Mixing them up is easy, but especially in academia (and in teaching research skills to students, which I do a lot!), getting the terms right really matters.

If you click on your paper’s page on RG, you’ll see two tabs: one for “References,” one for “Citations.” That’s the quickest way to see the difference in action!

Hope that clears it up — and feel free to ask if you’d like to compare how other platforms handle this. Happy to help!

Warmly,

This is amazing. I had no idea. I though references were just items cited by the author in his papers.

Dear W. M. Bernstein The (AI generated?) reply by Sergio Leal Ramirez is full of errors. Basically everywhere this reply talks about references it should be replaced by citations.

The only point made here that makes sense is that indeed RG allows not only references from papers in peer reviewed journals to your work to count as citations but also from preprints, blog type updates, (unfortunately) obvious AI generated "papers" etc..

References are solely called here on RG as you understand correctly as the papers mentioned in the paper itself, see for example your paper

Article Perspective-Taking, Self-Consciousness, and Accuracy in Pers...

The 174 citations are mentioned separately.

Best regards.

PS. The difference in number of references can be (in part?) explained by the fact that at some point the algorithm din't recognise 8-9 references. Just click on references and scroll down and you see that a number of references could not be linked to something here on RG.

For me, in ResearchGate (RG) feedback, “references” are the scholarly sources you cite to substantiate claims—peer-reviewed articles, books, datasets, standards, or preprints—ideally with persistent IDs (DOI, arXiv) and links. They enhance credibility, allow verification, and situate your comment within existing literature. Best practice: cite primary sources, prefer recent systematic reviews when appropriate, avoid predatory outlets, and be consistent in style (APA/Vancouver). On RG, you can paste DOIs/URLs or link to RG-listed publications; use brief in-text citations (e.g., Author, Year) and add a short reference list at the end of your comment.

In my practice, “references” are the full, end-of-post record of the scholarship I relied on—complete entries with authors, year, title, venue, and DOI/URL to make my claims traceable. “Citations,” by contrast, are the in-text signposts (Author, Year or [1]) that anchor specific statements to evidence at the precise moment they’re made. I treat citations as the provenance cues that keep the argument honest, and the reference list as the archival ledger; every citation should map to a reference, and every reference should justify its place

I appreciate the efforts people made to respond to my question. I hate to say this, but I still do not understand what 'references' means on RG. How can RG know scholarship an author used to "make his claims tracible". Interestingly, I looked at articles that RG said cited my paper "A basic and applied model of the body-mind system." I could not find my paper cited in any of the 6 papers that supposedly cited me. So, citations??? recommendations???!

Dear W. M. Bernstein

Your observation is caused by either poor referencing from the authors of the papers that ‘cited’ you or the shortcomings in the (RG) algorithm that assigned the citations to the right publication. Take for example: Article Motivational signals disrupt metacognitive signals in the hu...

The authors want to cite a chapter (see reference 19 in the paper) but added the DOI of the entire book (this is what the RG algorithm picked up).

The same is true for Chapter Yoga for Psychological Wellbeing in Modern Life and Contexts

The authors cited the entire book (Gendolla et al. (editors and not authors but anyway…) and again the DOI of the book

The same happened here Article An online randomised controlled trial of mental contrasting ...

and something similar happened in this paper:

Article Becoming Who You Are: An Integrative Review of Self-Determin...

Gendolla, G. H., Tops, M., & Koole, S. L. (2015). Introduction: Grounding self-regulation in the brain and body. In G. H. Gendolla, M. Tops & S. L. Koole (Eds.) Handbook of Biobehavioral Approaches to Self-Regulation (pp. 1-6). New York, NY: Springer

Unfortunately, the RG algorithm (and by Google Scholar as well) is far from flawless when it comes to citation counts for books and chapters.

Best regards.

Dear Rob Keller

Thanks for your clarification regarding the lack of actual citations found in those papers listed by RG as have cited me.