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[Posted on behalf of Anne Mayhew <[log in to unmask]> -- RBE] 
 
A query for historians for thought: 
 
Especially in an age of electronic abstracts and literature searches done 
by machine, the power of authors to cite sources can enhance status of 
individuals, journals and programs in a discipline.  As Universities, in 
an ongoing quest for fairness in evaluation,  try to use citation indexes 
to measure work effort and quality of work, the temptation to cite friends 
and intellectual allies becomes greater.  This much is well recognized, 
often in cynical remarks about citation padding and the power of citation. 
 
What is less well recognized, but is in some ways more interesting for the 
historian of thought is the power of not citing.  Sometimes failure to 
cite earlier work that makes the same points as those presented by the 
author, or to cite earlier work that is clearly relevant may result from 
a failure to do an adequate review of the literature, or from dispersion 
of literature across journals and countries.  On the other hand, it seems 
reasonable to suspect that failure to cite fairly obvious sources may 
also stem from an author's wish to claim novelty or to downplay those 
deemed intellectual rivals. 
 
My question: do you know of documented cases of such failure to cite? Are 
there stories in the history of thought that deal with this rather 
unpleasant approach to scholarship?  
 
Thanks, Anne 
 
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