The references listed by JABA authors reveal some of the sources of their own writing behavior. As Moore (The Behavior Analyst, 1992, 15, 1) noted, “...from a functional perspective, the importance of the articles is reflected in the extent to which they function as discriminative stimuli for the subsequent behavior of those who read them.”

Early in the life of the journal, self-citing (i.e., citations of JABA papers as a percentage of all citations to those papers) was quite high; it was 39% in 1974 and 34% in 1975. During the 1980s, it varied between 20% and 26% and, for the 1988 through 1992 period, it averaged 23%. The proliferation of behavioral journals in the 1970s and 1980s probably accounts for the downward drift in self-citations (cf. Wyatt, Hawkins & Davis, The Behavior Analyst, 1986, 9, 101-105).

This table presents data on the recent citation behavior of those writing for this journal. About 77% of citations by JABA authors during the five-year period presented in this table were spread among sources other than JABA itself, including books as well as journals. (The largest number of such sources was 657 in 1992.)

Year-by-year variability among which journals were cited obviously reflected variation in subject matter. Particularly wide fluctuations, such as the sudden appearance of Journal of Organizational Behavior Management with 45 citations by JABA authors during 1992, was due to two special sections in the Fall issue, on "Performance Management for Business and Industry" and "Performance Management for Sports and Exercise." These sections were also partially responsible for the sharp increase in citations of JEAB papers, several authors drawing inspiration from basic research on such topics as behavioral momentum and the matching law.

Not shown in the table are the large increases in references used by JABA authors during 1991 and 1992, increases that were mainly the product of increases in text pages published those years. However, citations per page did also increase over this period, from 1.5 / page in 1988 to 2.2 / page in 1992.