The aim of this paper is to determine the extent to which readers perceive correctly the reasons why authors cite items in scholarly texts.
The authors of ten library and information science articles provided the reasons for citing material in their articles and these reasons were compared with those suggested independently by readers of the articles.
Readers are able to perceive correctly author reasons for citation only to a very limited extent.
Limitations are a small sample of ten articles and 45 reader assessments of those articles, and the use of a single classification of reasons for citation.
The findings call into question techniques such as citation context analysis that are based on the assumption that readers understand the reasons why authors cite material.
This is the first attempt to compare author and reader reasons for citation and hence to validate the use of citation context analysis.
