Sentence:  The penchant for synthesizing the work of others that pervades British scholarship has been described by one of my cynical American colleagues as “a giant bibliography that is always eating its own tail.” By this he means that cliques of like-minded writers tend to <WSD>reference</WSD> each other's work incessantly. 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  To refer to, to use as a reference.