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I've recently noticed that some researchers are publishing papers in the same (or similar) IEEE journals where I've previously submitted (a year ago), covering topics closely related to my work. However, none of these papers cite my relevant paper on the same subject.

For instance, I recently found a paper in early access (not the final version) that I believe lacks a thorough analysis. In my view, referencing my work would have strengthened their discussion, as I addressed the same question a year ago. I’m genuinely puzzled as to how they could have overlooked such a relevant piece of research.

What would be the best way to address this with the journal? Would it be inappropriate to inform the authors directly?

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    Related: Are 'please cite my paper' emails socially accepted?
    – Anyon
    Commented Nov 5 at 14:28
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    "I’m genuinely puzzled..." in my area, I couldn't read every relevant paper if that was all I did 24/7. Readers need to be selective in their use of time and energy - sadly it doesn't always come down to the quality of the work. Has your work been well cited? Are you well known in your field? Do you "network"?
    – Dikran Marsupial
    Commented Nov 6 at 17:23
  • Its a little bit of a pointless task, it will happen.
    – Ander Biguri
    Commented Nov 8 at 17:05

3 Answers 3

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If they haven't used or referred to your work then they technically don't "need" to cite it. It might improve their work if they do, but that is a different question.

The journal isn't involved, absent plagiarism. It is the authors who may have missed something that might improve their own work.

Write to them and express interest in their work, pointing out that you have related, published, work that they would be interested in. You might even suggest collaboration in the future.

I suggest that you don't phrase it as a complaint, but as an opportunity.

Authors don't need to cite "all relevant work" in a paper. It is only those papers that they refer to, assuming that they aren't plagiarizing, of course.

In some fields, with a large literature, citing "all" relevant work would be largely impossible. Cite what you use.

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    I strongly disagree with your statement that they don't "need" to cite. Citations are not only to refer to material that is directly used in the paper, an independent purpose of them is to give credit where it is due by citing previous work on the same subject (even if unrelated to the present paper). In practice it is impossible for all previous work to be cited, but the authors should at least make a good faith attempt to cite a good number of them. Of course this may be highly field dependent, but this is the case in my field.
    – Aqualone
    Commented Nov 6 at 2:10
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    @Aqualone: It depends how closely relevant OP’s work is to the other work. If OP’s work is very close, then once the other researchers are made aware of it, they should certainly cite it. But in any field I’ve seen, most papers have a huge grey area of moderately-related works, within which it’s an authorial judgement which ones to discuss/cite.
    – PLL
    Commented Nov 6 at 12:24
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    @Aqualone What you write is highly field depending. Specifically, "an independent purpose of them is to give credit where it is due by citing previous work on the same subject (even if unrelated to the present paper)" definitely isn't the purpose of citations in my field(s) and would rather be an artificial/dishonest inflation of citation statistics. The only section in which one would cite papers that aren't directly used or built upon is the aptly named "Related Work".
    – MisterMiyagi
    Commented Nov 6 at 12:37
  • Thank you everyone for the discussion. Just to clarify, the topics are really very very close. So, for example, we both use and develop estimators, for the same parameter for the same research field and for the same application. When I wrote my own paper one year ago, it was very hard to miss all the other existing estimators to be honest. That is why I was surprised. However, I also agree with everyone here to some extent. My assumption also can be really strict and it is indeed not very difficult to miss this research.
    – CfourPiO
    Commented Nov 6 at 14:29
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    @Aqualone even if someone is doing something very very similar to you, they have no duty to have read your paper or use it. If they don't draw anything from your paper they don't owe you any "credit". In many areas there's so many papers that even if you did nothing but read papers 16 hours a day you couldn't read everything being published. Indeed the academic publishing cycle is often so slow that the work for a paper may be complete a year or more before a paper actually ends up in a journal.
    – Murphy
    Commented Nov 7 at 17:35
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I'm always interested to hear from people doing work similar to mine. I think it's fine to reach out to other authors working in your area to bring attention to your work.

However, usually when my colleagues and I receive a message along the lines of "please read my paper and cite it in your work", I find their paper doesn't actually relate that closely and may not be useful at all. It leads me to question whether they actually understand their own work or mine. I get the impression more that they're taking someone's misguided advice to promote their work through mass email. So, be wary that these people exist and that you want to avoid getting clumped up with them.

Instead, you many need to pay more attention to the social aspects of research. People find other peoples' work through conferences and networks, not just through keyword searches. Approaching someone at a conference to discuss similar work may come off a lot more friendly than a "cite me" email.

Also, remember that projects can develop over years, and publishing takes time; if your work is only a year old, it's possible the project was complete and the paper entirely written before yours came out.

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    to add: there’s nothing more annoying than receiving a “begging for citation” email.
    – ZeroTheHero
    Commented Nov 5 at 22:42
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    I'd like to emphasize your last paragraph, the OP should consider the length of time from submission to publication of some of their work and as an exercise search for how many works they might have usefully cited during that period.
    – civitas
    Commented Nov 6 at 0:21
  • Thank you for the answer and also the discussion. I appreciate it. I already emailed them without sounding desperate for citations; because that is what I am not looking for exactly. It is just a pity that people so close to this field is not reading the research, which is a bit unfortunate. I can not assume that they have ignored it, which I am also not ruling out.
    – CfourPiO
    Commented Nov 6 at 14:32
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    @CfourPiO There is an absolute firehose of information out there now. It's very easy to miss things, even in a small field, because there is insufficient organization of information into what is useful and what is not.
    – Bryan Krause ♦
    Commented Nov 6 at 14:34
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If you are not a reviewer, there should be absolutely no problem with you writing directly to the authors. Just tell them you saw the paper and thought they would be interested in your related work, without being pushy (or it may seem you are just fishing for citations).

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    Thank you for the answer. I have already emailed them.
    – CfourPiO
    Commented Nov 6 at 14:33

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