Question about word count and references in a scientific paper

[AuroraBorealis]

For people who work in scientific jobs and regularly write/read scientific papers.

I am in the process of getting my first paper publication-ready. However, it's still much too long. The usual citing style in my field is APA 7th. To my knowledge, this includes in-text citations (such as "(Stanford et. al., 2020)") into the manuscript's word count and only excludes the list of references at the end of the manuscript.

My in-text references make up a large portion of the word count. Since it's my first paper, I wasn't great at selecting "good" or "important" references. I tried to find as current references as possible which matched my points as accurately as possible.
Now, I have up to 4 references for one point, to make sure I have my citations clear. My list of references is very long. I need to discard some references. Is there a rule of thumb of how many references you should use for one point? Is one enough? If I have more than one, do I discard all but the most current one?
Unfortunately, my supervisor isn't very helpful, so I'm asking here.

Thank you!

 

[TBRS1]

I've written a lot of research papers, but none were technical, so I don't know if I can help you.

In your field, is there "metaresearch" (summaries of other research) that you could use instead of citing individual researchers? That might allow you to replace several citations with a single citation.

 

[AuroraBorealis]

In your field, is there "metaresearch" (summaries of other research) that you could use instead of citing individual researchers? That might allow you to replace several citations with a single citation.

Yes, there is, and I have used meta-analyses whenever possible, but for many points, there were only individual papers.
Thanks for your answer!

 

[Outdated]

I've never had to do such a thing in my life, but what if you used the same style as Wikipedia with numbered references?

 

[Neonatal RRT]

I have published articles myself, as well as, do a fair amount of medical research, which can include digging into those references to find the original sources of information. I think it may depend upon what type of article you are writing. I have done a fair amount of original work, so 100 or so references +/- is more the norm. Now, meta-analysis and review articles can easily have 200+ references.

That said, 2-4 references per key statement is reasonable. References that are original work, you can go back as far as 10 years. References that are meta-analysis and review articles, you can go back as far as 5 years. The more recent the reference, generally, the better.

Do understand that each specific journal has guidelines for formatting, references, etc. If you haven't committed to a specific journal, that would be my first step, then I would dig into those instructional details and format accordingly. Then comes another 6 months of back and forth peer review, modifying, and editing before it will be accepted. Be prepared for that.

 

[Masked Man]

In the class I most recently completed, we were required to have 30+ references, all within five years. I think for a scientific-based paper, that's probably most appropriate. It might be different if your paper was based upon history or literature.

 

[Stuttermabolur]

I spent a year in the US in a prestigious research group at the University of Pennsylvania (they published six papers in a Nature/Cell journal the last two years) during my MS studies. The primary investigator had been a professor for 35 years and was inducted into the national academy of sciences.

Whenever he saw a paper with lots of citations (especially if the paper wasn't very long) he called it a PhD thesis paper, reasoning that the first author was probably a PhD student who needed lots of citations in order to graduate because of university policies. He actually preferred fewer citations, and when he co-authored a review, he typically didn't have many citations. Most of the time, when people have lots of citations, most of them don't actually matter, or are just repeating themselves. This means that for someone working in the field or interested in the subject, it's more difficult to find which are the important ones because of all the "filler". Sometimes he had "key papers" in the bibliography which were bolded and had a short summary of their impact or findings, so that a reader would know which one might be of most interest to them without opening all the articles.

However, as a beginner, I think it's fine, and probably a good idea to have more citations than fewer when writing your first paper. With more confidence, you can reduce them over time.