References in Scholarly English and American Literary Journals Thirty Years Later: A Citation Study

This study examines 20,802 citations in 555 journal articles devoted to criticism of English and American literature published in 2003. Books are cited far more often (75.8%) than journal articles (19.8%). Over half of the monographs cited (55.4%) are less than twenty years old. In general, journal articles published within the past twenty years are the most frequently cited. Literary scholars use a diversity of monographs which fall outside of the core classifications for literature; over 40% are outside. This study is compared to other citation studies of English and American literature. It concludes with observations on the use of the Web, browsing by literary researchers, and English as an interdisciplinary field.