Referencing opinions that are visible in Google search results? I have this problem that I write:
&quot;Image segmentation methods include region growing, region modelling and mathematical morphology&quot;
These I can discover to exist in papers on image segmenting by doing a Google search. But I find it difficult to find a source that I could cite as for a &quot;definition of image segmentation&quot;. And I'm not sure if this is even necessary. And if I would reference, say three papers just in order to prove that these are image segmentation methods, then it would seem overkill.
In my field, it is common to see this type of thing in the &quot;related work&quot; section of a paper. And it is almost always accompanied by citations. What is &quot;overkill&quot; and why are you afraid of it? Citations don't clutter a paper that much that you have to be afraid of including them.
Think of it this way, if a entry-level graduate student was reading your paper, and didn't know exactly what region modelling meant, it would be helpful to have a single paper to go to that provides a description. Especially if there is any ambiguity among terms, you can clear up what you mean by &quot;region modelling&quot; by simply including a reference.