Cases when old references are valid?

Question

Some guides say to limit the references to up to 5-6 years old.

But I've speculated as to, whether it's possible that research would become "deviated to pursuits for which in the history there existed multiple paths". I.e. since old research may suggest new research, but not all new research is necessarily "all research", then wouldn't it be possible to grasp an old article and then do new work on that?

I'd assume that this could be very feasible in mathematical papers for example. What about computer science papers? Something else?

Answer 1

Taken at face-value, these guides are useless or even harmful, as they would promote an organized loss of memory and lead to multiple reinventions of the wheel.

It is also important, however, to show that your research is moving at the cutting edge of the field. This is probably where the advice you mention is coming from. You should demonstrate the topicality of your project by discussing the most recent literature to the extent that it is adequate for your research problem. Strategically, it may be useful to highlight your project's contribution to the latest research, including new trends, especially in the introductory section. But take care not to exaggerate this tactic, as it cannot compensate for substantive shortcomings and might even come across as superficial.

To explicitly answer the question in your title: References remain valid until superseded by later research with respect to the aspect they are cited for. To make that judgement, you have to know the field; to know the field, you have to read. Looking at the age of the reference cannot replace making that judgement, it can only give you a rough indication as to whether the reference is likely to have been superseded. The fact that different (sub-)fields move at different speeds makes it even less reasonable to put a number on a reference's shelf-life.

Answer 2

As a mathematician, this sounds like terrible advice to me.

I would be slightly wary of a paper where every citation is 10 or more years old; but even then, I have seen cases where such a situation makes perfect sense, because someone found a way to pick up the slack on a research avenue that had stopped 10 or 20 or more years prior.

In a good research paper the results should build upon previous work, so some recent citations are expected. But I would also expect a decent review of previous work. If all citations are less than six years old, then the paper is likely either too technical or too shallow.

Answer 3

It depends on the purpose of your reference. If you cite a paper to show the state-of-the-art, then older papers might be only acceptable for very niche fields, without too many publications. If you compare your results with an older paper, than you have to have a good explanation why such comparison is insightful.

If you refer to some general theory or idea, than older papers are still acceptable. I personally like to include the original paper for a given idea if the page limit allows it.

Answer 4

If you read it, and you relied on it for your research, then you have to cite it. To not cite it would be plagiarism.

Can you do good research without looking at anyone else's research that was published more than six years ago? Almost certainly not. Even if you were doing a review article on research from the last five years, you would want to contextualise that five years' research with the five/ten/fifty years before it.

Answer 5

As others have mentioned, this broad-stroke advice is sufficiently wrong in many disciplines to be useless as general guidance. Yes, of course you need to ensure you're up to date in your subfield, but above all you need to cite whatever is needed to ground your research conceptually and empirically, whatever its datestamp might be.

With that in mind, it's worth asking: when is such guidance valid in a nontrivial way? I have encountered it most often in the humanities or in interdisciplinary work with a humanities or social sciences element. A strong caution about old references is actually warranted in fields which have undergone major paradigmatic shift, especially where the old paradigms have been criticized for being biased or rooted in privilege.

If you run around quoting "old-school", Euro-centric papers on "Primitive Art" or South Asian civilizations, especially without engaging with the paradigmatic shift in (e.g.) postcolonial theory since then, you will (rightly) get skewered. Similarly, I have read then-respected scholarship in linguistics and psychology from a few decades ago that now makes us cringe. And woe betide you if you rely blindly on psychiatric research implicitly grounded in DSM versions <=4 (6 being most recent, I believe).

That doesn't mean you can't dig up something meaningful from the historical vaults even in such fields; just that you better know what you're doing and engage deliberately with material shifts since then. Therefore a simple heuristic of "don't do it" is, in those instances, helpful.

With that in mind (and in agreement with others answering), I'd actually turn your last paragraph around. Math is pretty simple in this regard; the only issue in quoting an old paper will be the obvious one: have you failed to note a more recent substantive advance; otherwise it's fine. It's not my field, but I would expect the shifts in computer science to be more significant. While not as big a deal as in many fields in the humanities, I think your risk of coming across as anachronistically irrelevant if you're relying significantly on old references are higher in C.S. than in math.