We define a citation as an action, that is, a citation is the inclusio — Citation

"We shall now proceed to lay before the reader some selections from the work under consideration, as illustrative of the style and matter..."

"Since the citation and the reference have different referents and are actually each others mirror image, it does not seem very wise to blur the distinction between them. This distinction has moreover the advantage that the quest for a citation theory in scientometrics and the sociology of science splits into two different, analytically independent research problems: the patterns in the citing behaviour of scientists, social scientists and scholars in the humanities on the one hand, and the theoretical foundation of citation analysis on the other."

"Citation index has provided researchers new ways to grasp the development of science and to cast a glimpse of the big picture of science."

"The reference is completely defined by the citing text it belongs to and the cited text to which it points. In semiotic terms the reference is a sign — the elementary unit of a representational system with the cited text as its referent... The citation is the mirror image of the reference... By organizing the references not according to the texts they belong to, but according to the texts they point at — they become attributes of the cited instead of the original, citing text. Semiotically, the citing text is the referent of the citation."

"The question of what constitutes a "citation" is one of the most controverted issues in the modern study of ancient quotations."

"The citation as used in scientometric analysis and science and technology indicators is not identical to the reference produced at the scientists desk. In other words, the citation is the product of the citation indexer, not of the scientist."