I heard about under-citation but not over-citation. Some articles especially Review Paper has more citations than Research Paper. However, I think a paper must be well cited but not necessarily in hundreds to promote readability. Maybe up 40-60.

Thanks a lot Dr Segun for sharing your nice views based on your experience.

Dear Ashok Pundir

Follow this link to find reasonable discussion about the number of references:

https://wordvice.com/how-many-references-to-include-in-a-research-paper/

Thanks a lot Dr Barbara for sharing your nice views based on your large research experience.

Generally, the minimum number of citations for a research manuscript should be around 25 and maximum should be around 40 to 50.

Thanks a lot Dr Mahesh Kumar for sharing your valuable views.

Thanks a lot Dr Mohammad for sharing your valuable views and a link.

You need to make citations for the sources you use. Also enough references should be made to previous work by others to place the research in context. Research papers become more valuable and long lasting when the reference section is comprehensive. The new research will become old, but the reference section may remain long time in frequent reading lists.

Thanks Dr Jerry for sharing your valuable contribution.

I think, there is not a definite number, it's like the number of pages of a doctoral thesis. So we have to be reasonable.

Thanks a lot Dr Abderrahmane for sharing your valuable thoughts.

Thanks Dr Marwah for sharing your valuable views.

In my opinion, too many references could be lost of the own contribution/ creativity.

In my case, it always exceeds 50.

Difficult to answer.

In my case, number of page was lowest 2 (short comm) and highest 54 (rev) and number of reference was 7 (sc)and 148 (rev).

All other articles were in between.

Thanks.

Citations must be when required for research papers maybe not more than 10 citations or less. Best regards.

Yours faithfully

Qais Khaleel

If a new research is being carried out that has very minimal literature, in that case 4 to 5 research papers are also sufficient as references.

It depends on the paper. If the paper is breaking new grounds, the reference list may be short. Typically, you should have more than 10.

I completely agree with @ Amir W. Al-Khafaji

It will depends on the type of research work, if completely new research then the citation of reference will be less but i think, not necessary exact numbers of references required for publication of research article.

Depends on the type and size of the search

Thanks a lot Dr Aung for sharing your valuable views.

Thanks a lot Dr Shibabrata for sharing your nice views based on your large research experience.

Thanks a lot Dr Mahesh Kumar for sharing your valuable views based on your large research experience.

Thanks a lot Dr Prabhjot for sharing your nice views.

Thanks a lot Dr Qais for sharing your valuable views..

Thanks a lot Dr Amir for sharing your valuable views based on your large research experience.

Thanks a lot Dr Farangis for sharing your nice contribution..

Thanks a lot Dr Koli for sharing your nice views.

The number of references depends on the topics and type of the paper. If the paper consist of empirical research with short literature review about 20 references will be enough. But if paper is theoretical in its nature, than the larger number of references is needed (40 to 50).

Dear Ashok Pundir , there were some related threads to this one. I think they may be useful to your research.

https://www.researchgate.net/post/How_many_references_could_be_given_for_a_particular_fact_Is_there_any_restriction_on_the_number_of_references_for_a_single_fact

https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_is_minimum_number_of_references_required_in_a_research_article_to_be_accepted_by_an_international_journal

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Is_there_any_optimum_range_regarding_no_of_references_one_should_include_in_a_research_paper

No, it is not how many sources used for the paper but rather extensively covered on the topic. It is about appropriateness, relevance and applicability for the research.

It usually depends on the type of paper. For a short communication or letter to the editor or case report not more than 10. For a full research article 40 to 60 and 80- 100 fro a review. That is my experience and opinion

Thanks a lot Dr Ljubomir for sharing your valuable contribution.

Thanks a lot Dr Jelena for sharing your important views.

Thanks a lot Dr Micheal for sharing your valuable thoughts.

Thanks a lot Dr Borden for sharing your valuable contribution.

I don't think there is a minimum... I'd be more concerned with the quality of the research, how well the research questions were address, the strength of the method, how well the paper was linked to its framework, the strength of conclusions, and so on ...

Thanks a lot Dr Daniel for sharing your valuable contribution.

I It depends on the type of work submitted and the journals if it a case report (rare new discovery) usually 5-6. For review and research paper it depends on the journal some limits up to 25 citations others maybe 50 or 60. Its a matter that concern the quality of the paper and all its contexts

many factors: type of article,the journal, the topic, etc

Based on my personal experiences, the number of references can be between 18 and 28. However, There is no rule of thumb.

Short articles of 1500 words can be effectively covered on the average with 15 references, 3500 words articles can be covered with 35 references. Although it may vary by the subject and many other factors, an average of one reference per 100 words might be optimum.

Totally depends on degree of nobility. So i agree with Dr. Catia in this regards.

Best!

In my field of research, "public health", I was recently surprised to learn that over citation is such a big concern, that the top journals have started designating the limits on number of citations. I think the issue is space for the print journals. In an article, published in the top journal in the field, the American Journal of Public Health, I had cited 62 sources. The journal asked me to either cut them down to 35 or pay for extra references (I believe $300). I opted for paying, the article is:

Article Creating a Taxonomy of Local Boards of Health Based on Local...

Number of references depends on the relevant literature available in the particular field of research.

In a research paper, we include citations in the "Introduction" and "Results and Discussion" parts. You need not fix a minimum limit for the references, but a maximum of 15 highly relevant references is enough. For a review paper, however, we cannot set a maximum number.

Normally I guess about 40 to 50 references.

https://wordvice.com/how-many-references-to-include-in-a-research-paper/

5-10

Thanks a lot Dr Lamia for sharing your valuable contribution.

Thanks a lot Dr Catia for sharing your valuable thoughts.

Thanks a lot Dr Mahesh Kumar for sharing your valuable views.

Thanks a lot Dr Reza, Dr Gulzar, Dr Shukra Raj and Dr George for sharing your important contributions.

Thanks a lot Dr Saif, Dr Salwan , Dr Dmytro and Dr Vladimir for sharing your valuable thoughts.

Interested

it depends on several factors: newspaper or conference paper, new topic of research or not...

I guess it depends:

In medicine a normal original article is allowed like 25-30references. But as i said it depends what kind of publication we are referring to

Regards

It depends on the topic investigated

But we can say about 30 to 40

Any way a lot of ref is more appreciated than non suffcient refrences

Best

Why not 100 Or more than 100 references; when I asked my head librarian, (he is PhD, when he was delivering lecture on how to search data bases), that in my thesis, how much articles, I have to include; he simply stated that it is your study, read as much as in Pakistan, no one knows, More than you, about this topic. Simply I don't find the studies effective that have less than 45 articles.

One more thing, when I was studying from the book bioethics in health care, written by Beauchamp and Childress, every chapter has more than 100 references and it is excellent classical book to read on ethics.

As discussed above Nazia Asad the references are related to the kind of work you are doing:

For PhD it can be as you suggested.

For review again it can ble like 50 plus or close to 100

For original articles it was what is u suggested 25 -30 it can be as you suggested.

For editorial like 10

letter to editors again it can be like 5-10

case history up to 10 or less

it all depends upon the type of work, and then journals have specific suggestions about references.

Regards

20-25

It largely depends 9n the kind of paper, the field of research and the scarcity/abundance of literature in the field of study. More references are required for review papers while narrowly researched areas may require few references.

Thanks a lot Dr Rana, Dr Abir and Dr Sikandar for sharing your valuable views.

Thanks a lot Dr Nazia, Dr Nawel and Dr Eman for sharing your important thoughts.

Thanks a lot Dr Mohamed and Dr Dickson for sharing your excellent contribution.

Over citation is not recommended. 30- 40 references could be reasonable. Although this is not always fixed as it varies according to the nature of the research laper and the type of its topic.

20 seems to be normal and 40-50 maximum.

Thanks a lot Dr Hazim and Dr Nasser for sharing your valuable views.

Number of research papers depends upon the type of paper-Case study, research paper, review papaer, survey and also on number of objectives of research paper. If you are focussing on wide area then number of references will increase and if narrowing down and being specific for paper then number of references will decrease. But optimum number of references for me is 25 atleast. Themaximum number of references vary paper to paper. I have seen some papers where numberof references have gone beond 100 also.

Thanks Kirti for sharing your detailed response.

The number of references in a paper might differ to the type and length of paper and research. For instance, in a Master's Thesis, the researcher should use 40-50 citations and references.

Thanks Dr Maytham for sharing your valuable views.

Thanks Dr Abdullah for sharing your valuable response.

Depend on resea papers and the notion of subject.

best regards

Qais Khaleel

Thanks Dr Qais for your valuable response.

You are welcome Dr. Ashok Pundir my honor to know you.

best regards

Qais Khaleel

5-10 papers

Ranking the significance of scientific publications is a long-standing challenge. The network-based analysis is a natural and common approach for evaluating the scientific credit of papers. Although the number of citations has been widely used as a metric to rank papers, recently some iterative processes such as the well-known PageRank algorithm have been applied to the citation networks to address this problem. In this paper, we introduce nonlinearity to the PageRank algorithm when aggregating resources from different nodes to further enhance the effect of important papers...

https://www.nature.com/articles/srep06663

References are a litmus test for the literature review.

Should be optimum for good research.

Too many references may question on novel research.

The idea of lieterature review is to establish the state of existing body of literature to then highligh the gaps to justify the current study. For a new topic with scant existing literature, whatever is relevant must be included even though the number of references is less than a dozen. Most print journals prefer that the number of references be limited to 35 To 40.

Thanks a lot Dr Maytham, Dr Dmytro, Dr Bhaskar and Dr Gulzar for sharing your valuable views.

Thanks a lot Dr Ljubomir for sharing your important contribution and a useful link.

There is no any limit for quoting the references in the papers.But it should be remembered that it is optimum. References should be to the point. Current references must be there to compare the results. However in the case of a review paper, number of references depend on the topics covered and the length of paper. finally it is the author who can decide the relevant numbers of references in his paper.

Thanks a lot Dr Rai for sharing your valuable views.

50 more relaxe

I think the proposal of topics Master requires five references ...

Ashok Pundir ,

I think there no limitation or bindings for this . But for an standard research paper, huge reading is a must to write the literature review of the paper.Literature Review is the part of core materials of the paper. So, I think at least 30-50 research papers should be read out for the next course of actions of your research paper. For Thesis of Phd, Post Doc, Dissertation of Masters I think the number should more.

Thanks

I think there must be citations of the literature review to substantiate your findings. It not how many but relevance, appropriateness and applicable to your research paper.

I think the number of references depend on the the quality and type of research paper. Review articles usually need more references. So, there is no limited number for references regarding articles.

A number of references is not an issue if you intend to publish in a high quality journals. All depends on how novel your research is; if there is no references , then editor will evalute this and convincingly accept it.

On the contrary, the most ranked journals especially Elseiver requires a doi papers in which also ISSN is adequately provided.

In conclusion, if you willing to publish a high quality journals then take into account that you have to consider depending on decent journals as references.

I think 16-45 references could be optimum numbers, otherwise, there would be not obvious for the own contribution.

Well, it depends on what reviewer and editor wishes !!

Let us not beat around the bush ...

Well, if your are reporting your research results in the form "short communication", "short note" or 'letter', it can even be without references! Regarding maximum number, the journal may have an editorial policy; they may have set the maximum number. There is no point in simply quoting or debating on a wishful number!

30-40 could be enough but the number of references may be more or less depending on the nature of the research and the method of analysis. In short, there is no limited or fixed number for the use of references in a research paper.