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Is there a phrase or word for an "inverse" bibliography?

English Language & Usage Asked by Pronominal on August 20, 2021

When documents (books, papers, web pages) cite another work, they may have a list of said works in a specific section. Depending on the level of formality and other details of the document, that section has a variety of common titles:

  • Bibliography
  • Works Cited
  • Reference List

However, we could also list works in which the document is cited. As an example, Google used to offer a service that let you find out what sites link to your webpage. That list would be called a _____?

As another example, though probably less common, a subsequent edition or reprint of a textbook could offer a list of other textbooks that reference its first edition. Logistical and motivational issues aside, what would that list be called?

3 Answers

The term commonly used for this in journals or journal sites is:

citation 5. the act of citing or quoting a reference to an authority or a precedent.

The list of 'citations' of a paper or article is not the bibliography or references but rather the set of documents that refer to the article in question.

Though 'citation' sounds just like 'entries in a bibliography', the existence of bibliography leads one to infer that 'citations' are entries of the other direction, namely references to the article in question.

Some sites say

Cited By

to make this explicit.

Note that it is usually the publishing system that generates a 'cited by' section outside of a document. Original articles do not have a 'cited by' section within since under normal circumstances you can't refer to an article that hasn't been published yet.

Correct answer by Mitch on August 20, 2021

I can think of no common phrase for such a list.

As a placeholder for somebody else who does know of such a phrase, and is able to provide it, I offer the following advice.


Do not make up a phrase that is ambiguous. Instead, use unambiguous language.

There is nothing wrong with using the following as a section heading:

  • A List of Works That Reference This Document

It's not conventional. However, in the absence of convention, it's better to say something clearly in more words than concisely in words that can be misunderstood.

Answered by Jason Bassford on August 20, 2021

I agree with Mitch and Jason's answers; still, for the sake of completeness, I'll add the phrase I ended up using.

Referrer List/List of Referrers

The logic behind this choice being:

  1. It complements "Reference List" fairly well. "Reference List" and "Referrer List" make it relatively obvious (hopefully) that the two are related, but in different directions. Similarly, I would consider "Works Cited" and "Cited By" to be another complementary pair.
  2. There is a (weak) precedent for "List of Referrers" in the context of HTTP headers. Typically, this is mentioned as a "list of allowed referers", but either way, the overall idea is similar in that it's a list that allows us to track where a reference/link originated from.

Of course, it's not entirely unambiguous, so I also included a description along the lines of "Documents that reference this document."

Answered by Pronominal on August 20, 2021

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