Use of Citations within Manuscripts Published by the Journal of Agricultural Education

Because publications serve as the institutional memory of a discipline, researchers have the responsibility of becoming familiar with and acknowledging previous literature. The use of citations in manuscripts is considered ethical best practice, and is a method of manuscript evaluation. In agricultural education, researchers have recommended that an evaluation of manuscript citations be conducted every ten years in order to ensure the integrity of the profession’s research repository. This study served as a descriptive evaluation of the use of citations in the Journal of Agricultural Education from 2003 to 2012. Findings indicated that the average number of citations used, the number of citations to support the conceptual framework, the number of citations from within and outside the profession, and the number of citations used to support findings increased over the 10-year time span.