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The aim of this study was to determine whether different areas of knowledge presented different behaviour with regard to the number of references cited per journal document or if, conversely, they shared the same reference density practices. Bibliometric and bibliographic data were collected from 27,141 journals (indexed between 2001 and 2015 in the SCImago Journal & Country Rank (SJR)) and the growth rates in reference density and number of documents and journals in each category were calculated at different levels of aggregation. Our analysis identified that (a) mean reference density values in some Social Sciences and Arts and Humanities categories were equal to or higher than those in the “hard sciences”; (b) reference density growth rates in these disciplines were not as high as those in the hard sciences and, in general, did not correspond with growth rates in the number of documents produced; (c) this can be considered an indication that citation-based evaluation practices affect publication habits; and (d) no significant differences were found in mean values or growth rates between Gold Open Access and Non Gold Open Access journals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] The combination of citation-based networks succeeds in optimizing journal classification. [•] VOS and Louvain clustering algorithms work fine on large journal citation networks. [•] VOS and Louvain clustering solutions enhanced original SJR journal classification. [•] Both algorithms showed a very similar performance in journal classification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]