Historical and epistemological trajectory of the citation studies in Brazil

Abstract The paper presents the historical and epistemological trajectory of citation studies in Brazil through national scientific journal articles. It is justified by the lack of studies that show the state of the art of citation studies in Brazil, as well as the importance of their results for the understanding of the contexts of production and communication of science. The objective of the research is to identify and discuss the elements of the historical and epistemological trajectory of citation studies in Brazil in articles indexed on the Base de Dados Referencial de Artigos de Periódicos em Ciência da Informação, 1972-2014. The research work has a descriptive nature and uses content analysis techniques to systematize temporal, theoretical and methodological information contained in articles published over forty years. It discuss the features and settings of citation studies based on: (a) two stages: embryonic and emerging; (b) the theoretical approaches: normative, constructive and sociocultural. It shows the stage of historical and epistemological trajectory of citation studies and launches prospects for future work related to the thematic.