About right: references in open-access EGU (European Geosciences Union) journals

We investigated the number of references per page for different European Geosciences Union journals, which share the same text formatting. Although the journals formally all focus on geoscience, different disciplines are covered, from ocean science and biogeosciences to the technical description of numerical model development. In this study, we show that the number of references per page is remarkably constant across these journals. In addition, this value has remained constant in the last decade, despite the consistent increase in the number of pages and in the number of references in almost all journals considered. Independently of the quality of the references used in an article, we show that for the EGU (European Geosciences Union) journals the average number of references per page is 3.82 (1.87–6.18 at 90 % confidence level). This reveals that there is a consensus regarding optimum reference density, which depends on the journal's layout and not on the journal's discipline.

About right: references in Open Access EGU journals

We investigated the number of references per page for different European Geophysical Union journals, which share the same text formatting. Although the journals formally all focus on geoscience, different disciplines are accommodated, from ocean science and biogeosciences to the technical description of numerical model development. Here, we show that across such different disciplines, the number of references per page is remarkably constant, revealing that there is a consensus regarding optimum reference density in the community. Further, this value has remained constant in the last decade, despite the consistent increase in the number of pages and in the number of references in almost all journals investigated. Independently of the quality of the references used in a article, we show that for the EGU journals the average number of references per page is 3.82 (1.87–6.18 at 90 % confidence level).