Abstract
Manga is a cross-modal medium that combines text and images. In academic papers, references to manga can focus on a wide range of elements. And, tracing the sources of these references is not always straightforward, given the prevalence of multiple editions and media adaptations that share the same storyline. This study investigates whether manga cited in academic papers can be properly traced based on the citation descriptions provided. We examined 90 papers: 46 from an engineering-focused proceedings collection and 44 from a humanities-focused journal. We collected instances where manga content or expression was cited and analyzed the accompanying source descriptions. The findings indicate that, while these papers all address manga as a shared subject, the traceability of cited works is influenced by disciplinary citation conventions, and there is considerable variation in how different components of manga expression are referenced.
