PurposeThe Method section of research articles offers an important space for researchers to describe their research processes and research objects they utilize. To understand the relationship between these research materials and their representations in scientific publications, this paper offers a quantitative examination of the citation contexts of the most frequently cited references in the Method section of the paper sample, many of which belong to the category of research material objects.Design/methodology/approachIn this research, the authors assessed the extent to which these references appear in the Method section, which is regarded as an indicator of the instrumentality of the reference. The authors also examined how this central measurement is connected to its other citation contexts, such as key linguistic attributes and verbs that are used in citation sentences.FindingsThe authors found that a series of key linguistic attributes can be used to predict the instrumentality of a reference. The use of self-mention phrases and the readability score of the citances are especially strong predictors, along with boosters and hedges, the two measurements that were not included in the final model.Research limitations/implicationsThis research focuses on a single research domain, psychology, which limits the understanding of how research material objects are cited in different research domains or interdisciplinary research contexts. Moreover, this research is based on 200 frequently cited references, which are unable to represent all references cited in psychological publications.Practical implicationsWith the identified relationship between instrumental citation contexts and other characteristics of citation sentences, this research opens the possibility of more accurately identifying research material objects from scientific references, the most accessible scholarly data.Originality/valueThis is the first large-scale, quantitative analysis of the linguistic features of citations to research material objects. This study offers important baseline results for future studies focusing on scientific instruments, an increasingly important type of object involved in scientific research.Peer reviewThe peer review history for this article is available at: 10.1108/OIR-03-2021-0171