In the excerpt on Documentation by Robert Hauptman, the various applications of documentation are explored. These include: acknowledgement, attribution, tracing, validation, protection and commentary which are sometimes inter-related. Depending on the nature of the work and by what type of individual,  whether an expert in the field or a just a mere mortal such as myself, the purposes for documentation and citation varies. For expert researchers, most if not all of these applications may be used in his or her work for reasons such as giving credit to those that influenced his or her work, aswell as for an attribute or proof for a new discovery.

With the existence of copyright law and what it means to owners of intellectual property, the purpose for documentation by average users may be differ from experts. For fear of being accused or threat of a suit, non-expert researchers may use documentation mainly for the acknowledgment and protection purposes.