Citation Concepts

In botany, species names of plants are attributed to specific botanists by putting the author name or an abbreviation after the species name. This practice is both currently in practice and spans back centuries, in varying forms. Some examples of these forms are on display in this project.

The citation itself can take different forms, such as citations incorporated into the main text, parentheticals within the main text, and footnotes partitioned off by page layout. These formal mechanisms 

R. B. Williams provides a framework to describe the structure of what he calls citation systems. "A citation system comprises two basic elements, which may be separate or combined. [...] the first is a device by which a reference (q.v.) is cited in the body of a text and the second is the respective bibliographical reference given separately somewhere outside of the text[...]" (999). When the two elements are separate, the citation system is indirect; when the two elements are combined and occur together within the body of the text, the system is direct.

Williams then classifies citation systems further based on whether they are explicit or implicit. "All indirect systems are explicit, i.e. the reference provides complete bibliographical details. Direct systems may be explicit or, in the Linnaean style, implicit, i.e. the reference element is conceptual with the bibliographical content considerably abbreviated" (1000).

As an example, this website uses indirect citation systems; cited information itself is put on content webpages, while reference information in the form of MLA-style citations is collated on the separate Works Cited page. As an indirect system, this website also uses an explicit citation system; complete bibliographical details of sources such as author name, title of work, publisher, and date of publication may be viewed on the Works Cited page.

Citations contain varying amounts of information on the work from which information is being drawn. The reference information provided by the citations examined in this project primarily consist of different combinations of author, title of work, and location in work.

Dan Edelstein, Robert Morrissey, and Glenn Roe provide what they call a "typology of citation," developed from their work on citation in the Encyclopédie. This typology lays out possibilities for different levels and categories of reference information provided, which are as follows: 

No citation in article

Author is not cited in article

Specific information acknowledged to have another source, but without specific attribution

Specific information not cited, but source is included in a reference section

Specific information not cited, but source work's title is mentioned in article

Specific information not cited, but author's name is mentioned in article

Entire article presented as summary of another work

Specific information attributed by periphrase (e.g. 'eminent Swedish botanist' for Linnaeus)

Specific information attributed by author's name

Specific information attributed by source work's title

Specific information attributed by author's name and source work's title

Specific information attributed by author's name, source work's title, and location in source work

Specific information attributed to a different author than the actual source

Given the number of possibilities this typology covers, and the extent to which this project itself draws on the Encyclopédie, I decided to apply this typology to the citations I encounter in this project. However, it was not universally applicable to all instances of citation I did encounter.

Many frameworks have been developed to categorize citations based on various factors; a wide selection of these schema are summarized by Blaise Cronin. Cronin also discusses theories of citation as particular social processes within scientific communities. A treatment on the scientific community of early modern France is outside the scope of this project, and the categories of the citation studies outlined are far more numerous than I needed.

For a project such as this, I felt that only three categories would be needed: citations that use cited work as an authority on knowledge in a subject; citations that use cited work to express a sentiment through particular phrasing; and citations of information that is then refuted by the citing work.