ABSTRACT
This chapter now turns to a very compelling issue, which is the references used by researchers in their articles. Here, the focus will be only on the language of references, leaving aside the network analysis of authors who cite each other throughout Idafat. This is still under examination and it allows one to draw conclusions about whether Idafat sparks dialogue and debate among sociologists and intellectual communities. Table 6.6 shows there is, in general, a modest place for the Arabic language versus English and French, as the average use of references in Arabic is 7.4 per article against 7.0 in English, 4.9 for French, and 0.3 for other languages, i.e., those in Arabic represent around one-third of the references. This was the case despite the relentless efforts made by the Idafat editorial board to request authors who had not performed a literature review of the Arabic scholarship to do so. The board and reviewers thus often suggest additional references in Arabic. It may be useful to examine the distribution of the average use of the references in issues, according to the nationality of the first author, and in an attempt to understand the relationship between university and languages used in the literature. One may note evidence from Tables 6.6 and 6.7 that authors in the Arab East generally refer more to Arabic references (except Lebanon) compared with Maghreb authors.
