Citing multiple references in one number While reading papers I have found some paper where multiple papers are listed in a single reference:



In the text, this is woven in with “The Cornell group [3] …”. Other papers have something like this and then use “[3-5]” and have the three consecutive references.

Is this just another way to refer to multiple papers if they are not disambiguated within the paper?
You are right about the function of this, but I think it's often not the best practice (although this is strictly my own opinion).  Personally, I avoid combining references entirely.  In my opinion, it can be used legitimately, when the papers combined into a single reference are by (mostly) the same authors and cover the continuous development of a single topic.  However, I mostly see it used by people who want to pour a large number of references into a single number, perhaps to save a little bit of space.