[dagw]

Once a paper gets big enough you basically have to cite it any time you touch on vaguely related just to prove that you are aware of it, almost as a shibboleth. My wife is an academic and on more than one occasion has she gotten comments back from peer review along the lines of "good article, but you why haven't you cited famous papers X,Y and Z".

[edraferi]

I really appreciate this practice. It makes it much easier to get up to speed on something new.