> Somebody will blurt out an idea in a meeting, wait until someone else has developed it, and then rush in to take credit. I see what you mean, but this is mo

> Somebody will blurt out an idea in a meeting, wait until someone else has developed it, and then rush in to take credit. I see what you mean, but this is mostly office politics, which is not very related to the academic citation process. If an author makes a conjecture that stimulates further work (even if it's just on the ArXiv), he deserves to be cited. > Lots of ideas are anticipated in science fiction, but do those authors really deserve credit? Well, I guess it depends on how much the idea is fleshed out. Lucian was probably the first author to conceive space travel, but it was just "people land on the moon" (still pretty far out for his times, though). Meanwhile, Asimov's three laws of robotics depict a reasonable control scheme for e.g. an autonomous vehicle, so if they are somehow implemented their author should be credited.