Compiling a Strong Bibliography

The bibliography is one of the most important parts of any academic manuscript, yet often gets the least amount of attention. By compiling a strong and compelling bibliography, you can demonstrate and ensure that you are familiar with the structure, history, and cutting-edge research of your discipline. However, assembling a weak bibliography can indicate that you are unfamiliar with the field, and may result in research that fails to reference or build on previous work. A good bibliography is essential in research because it ensures that your work is in dialogue with what came before, and also that it can be effectively referenced in what will come after.

1. Make sure you include foundational and influential papers.
Some disciplines and subfields have foundational or very influential papers that most researchers are expected to cite. When reading the scholarship in your field, you may notice one or two papers that are in the bibliography of almost every article you read. If this is the case, it is often a good idea to include that article in your own work to demonstrate that you are familiar with the history and structure of your discipline. This can be especially important in the social sciences and humanities, where sometimes entire subfields are based on a single piece of scholarship. Failing to reference the most important pieces of work in your field can make it seem like you are unfamiliar with it.

2. Make sure you include recent publications.
Not only do you need to demonstrate that you are familiar with the classics, you also need to show that you are up to date with the most cutting-edge research in your field. The majority of your bibliography should consist of studies that have been published in the last five years (or maybe ten in some slower-moving humanities and social science disciplines). If you can, referencing work published in the last two years is best; this ensures that your work is relevant and tells readers that your own work is cutting edge.

3. Reference a few review articles and meta-analyses, but focus on original research.
Reading literature review articles and meta-analyses can be a good way to familiarize yourself with the current state of the field, and you can use them to help you find good articles to reference in your own work. If you do this, you should make sure to include the review article in your bibliography, both to acknowledge the authors’ work and so that other researchers can find it themselves. However, it is best to avoid citing too many review articles or meta-analyses; try to stick to only one or two, and reserve the rest of your bibliography for original research articles.

4. Consider the number of citations an article has.
When curating references, it can be helpful to check the number of citations a paper has. A paper that has a low number of citations might be new or not well-known, so including it may emphasize the novelty of your work. However, doing this can run the risk of citing a study that is not taken seriously by other researchers. Citing a paper with a high number of citations immediately indicates that you are aware of important debates in your field. Searching Google Scholar for articles can provide you with an article’s citation metrics, and also help connect you to other related articles by telling you which articles cited the one you searched.

5. Verify the credibility of your references and their journals.
When compiling a bibliography, it is important that you only reference credible articles. The best way to do this is to check the credibility of the journal the article was published in. Make sure that the journal in question is peer reviewed, that its editors-in-chief and editorial board are all recognized scholars in your field, and that the journal does not have a reputation for being predatory. Predatory journals are those that publish almost any article that is submitted to them with little, or no, editorial oversight. Referencing articles published in these journals will reflect negatively on the quality of your paper. One way to ensure that a journal is reputable is to check its Impact Factor or CiteScore. You can also search Peeref to see what other researchers are saying about the journal in question.

6. Limit self-citations.
It can be tempting to cite your own work in an attempt to raise your citation count, but this practice is often seen as unethical. That being said, it is perfectly acceptable to cite your own research when you are directly referencing and building on your previous findings or ideas. However, you should avoid citing your own studies simply to increase your own citation count, as this will reflect negatively on your work.

7. Cite from your target journal.
If you know what journal you will be submitting your manuscript to, including a few references from that journal is a good way to signal to the editor and reviewers that you are familiar with the journal and that your topic will be a good fit for it. Reading these articles can also help you understand the guidelines of your target journal and better match your writing and content to it, thus increasing your odds of publication.

8. Keep your bibliography focused.
While there is no hard and fast rule for the number of references you should include in your bibliography, you should make sure that you have enough references to cover the breadth of your subfield, however you define it, but that you only include references that are directly related to your topic (or are too important in your field to ignore). A bloated bibliography can make your paper seem unfocused; make sure that every article you cite is referenced in your paper and has a direct bearing on putting your own findings into their academic context.

With these eight tips, you can ensure that your paper is well situated in the scholarly debates of your field.