Where do formal citations in scientific publications originate from?

There are zillions of citation styles to reference publications, especially in academic writing. Browsing late 19th century journals I was suprised by the lack of formal bibliographies and references, as usual today. When and how were they introduced in scientific publications? Is there a history of citation styles?

Im am not interested in the evolution of particular citation styles but in the evolution of the idea of formal references in scientific publications. It looks like until the 19th century it was common to just refer to "the recent results" instead of citing a list of specific articles with author, title, journal, pages etc. Citation styles are usual no later than the 1960s, the introduction of citation analysis by Eugene Garfield may also have had an impact. I guess that formal citations got obligatory during the early 20th century, but when and how?

Jakob

• citations

Comments

• Ashley Nunn: Is there a specific style you are interested in? Or do you want just a general overview of the beginning of citation styles, period? The history of each style would be an incredibly long and convoluted answer, considering, like you said, there are "zillions".
• Jakob: I am interested in a general overview. For instance when did which journal introduce guidelines or how many percent of articles had formal citations in which year.
• KatieR: Is this a question related to the library profession? It sounds more like a reference question. I am not 100% sure that citation styles and rules are decided upon by librarians. I realize librarians, in some situations, teach how to do citations but is there a roundtable or committee made of librarians that create citation rules? Input on this would be helpful since I am a little ignorant on the subject.
• Jakob: Citation analysis and bibliometrics is an area of library and information science since the late 1950s. I am interested in how citations as explicit references evolved before this time.
• Joe: I assume you've read Garfield's 1954 "Association-of-Ideas Techniques in Documentation: Sherpardizing the Literature of Science" and Weinberg's 2004 "Predecessors of Scientific Indexing Structures in the Domain of Religion]. Admittedly, they're more about citation indexes. You might also look to see if any local libraries have Samuel C. Bradford's 1948 *Documentation*
• Trevor Owens: It's an interesting question. One that I would be interested to know an answer to. Related, there is a good bit of historical work on the history of the footnote as a citation device (ex http://www.amazon.com/The-Devils-Details-History-Footnotes/dp/0743241754/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_b). I believe the Chicago Manual of Style goes back to 1905.
• Bill Lefurgy: There is a timeline for the "history of citation" at http://www.xtimeline.com/timeline/History-of-Citation that begins in
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