Don't want to worry anybody... [purplecthulhu]

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There was a discussion over lunch about the number of references in PhD theses.

Someone was saying they had 45 or so and wondered how appropriate that was. I've just counted the number of references in the paper I'm working on at the moment (its large, at 27 pages, but is definitely not a PhD thesis). There are 76 references.

I realise things are different in different fields, but was surprised that my reference count here was already so high.

OK - end to academic pretentiousness. Now back to your normally scheduled memage...

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There are 26 comments on this entry. (Reply.)

45 seems an odd number to me because it's higher than I would expect to see in a primary paper (20ish?) and lower than I would expect to see in a review (80+).

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While I'm working on a primary paper and am already at 76...

I'll await a response on the 45 figure from the person who came up with that number, if she's reading...

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!

I think half the journals we submit to regularly explicitly object to that many references in that sort of paper.

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Interesting... I've never heard of the number of references being objected to, nor have I objected to it as a referee. But then this paper also has about 50 authors, which is odd in a lot of fields.

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It's around 45 references, but this is for a transfer report rather than a paper, so I dunno if that might account for the oddness. I don't know what field you're in, but this is for a biology PhD, so that might also account for any differences to what you'd normally see in say, physics.

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I think my biology PhD transfer report is going to end up around 35 references, if that helps.

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My day job is medical writer, so those numbers were based on the stack of papers I actually have on my desk right now. :) But you're right, a transfer report is not directly comparable to a paper.

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I just checked and in the second version of my transfer report i had 83.

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Just checked my PhD thesis. 130 pages (double-spaced, of course); 357 footnotes; 231 books and articles cited. But it's history rather than science, so the research material is more citable in the first place.

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Just checked mine. Cunningly I numbered them so it was easy...

187 references.

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I suspect the median date of my references was a bit earlier than the median date of yours!

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Very probably :-)

Quick scan shows the earliest date is 1923, but there's also a dateless reference to Xenophon's Memorabilia which is probably quite old...

I was quite impressed when the coauthor on a paper I did a few years ago not only managed to get a reference back to the late 1800s, but also managed to slip in a reference to War of the Worlds.

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There was a discussion over lunch about the number of references in PhD theses.
I guess it depends on what subject it's in. My thesis (vii+149 pages, pure mathematics) has 32 references. A friend of mine (ii+129 pages, pure mathematics) had 26 references in his, while another (xi+217 pages, applied-ish mathematics) had 91 in his. My impression (not just based on this small sample) is that pure mathematics tends to yield fewer pages and references, at least in PhD theses, than more applied subjects.

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On my first, and so far only, might-become-a-paper (pure maths) 28 references. On my currently being worked on manuscript 19 (though I expect more before it's through). On PhD Theses of other people I happen to have to read (both pure maths) 35 and 46 references.

So I reckon pure maths is on the low end for references, overall.

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Just checked mine - something of the order of 300-350 references. Although the thesis was a bit on the big side (270 pages). And that's a bioscience PhD. Problem is that it depends on what you're working on - if it's one a lot of people work on, or if it crosses many fields, then you can have way more refs than something esoteric. So I tend to agree that number of referencess is not an issue. It's missing out relevant work that's the problem...

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I had about a hundred-odd, which was average to low for my year/department. Factors that brought the numbers up: my first year was looking at a radically different problem to the last two, so there were in effect two literature surveys. On the other hand, I got away with using "and references cited therein" very frequently.

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My thesis (chemistry) had around 250 references - this was fairly standard in our group, with usually 500-1000 references in the corresponding endnote file. 45 seems consistent more with a mediocre MSc thesis in my experience (Chemistry and Biochemistry). Even for some fields that are thin on articles (breaking fields/quantum) I've seen a reduced number, but not that reduced. But as stated before, it's the quality that counts - if they've succinctly addressed everything, not got most of the material off wikipedia (more and more common amongst the undergrads), and addressed deviations related to the field and history - well, just have to say it's well condensed :)

(Oh, my last _grant application_ already had 80 refs and I hadn't covered all the pertinent people - and this is in a 'minority' field (just prolific) - last paper around 50)

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528 footnotes. 211 pages of contents, not including bibliography and images. But then I'm in history.

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Hmm. I realize that I'm not certain in this discussion whether "references" means "number of footnotes/endnotes/parenthetical notes" or "number of sources listed in bibliography".

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The sciences don't do footnotes, as far as I can tell, so I'm not actually sure what a footnote is or is for. What I mean by references are the papers lised in the bibliography.

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Foundation has traditionally tried to encourage people *not* to have more than 30 endnotes for every 5,000 words.

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ps Rhetorics of Fantasy cites 197 indivdual works of fiction.

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Presumably it depends a lot on the field you are writing in but still, I'd have thought 45 was pretty low.

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Hmm 432 references. Again, biochemistry and it was a long thesis.

Normally have something like 30-40 references in the papers we do.

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My paper comparing female genital cutting and intersex surgery is on the box next to my desk waiting to be revised for submission to a journal, so I had a quick look. 21 pages, 69 references. Mind you, if I wrote a PhD on the same topic, it probably wouldn't have that many more references, because as far as I can tell, I read pretty much everything that's been written in English on those topics from an academic legal point of view.

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My University (History Dept.) didn't have aguideline on the number of references. If you used an idea/concept/or direct quote from someone elses work you referenced it. As most historic work is based on what has gone before, there tends to be a lot of references. I had about 50 in my batchelors' dissertation.

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purplecthulhu

Don't want to worry anybody...

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