The phrase "a lack of reference" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to describe a situation where there is an absence of citation or source material in a discussion or document.
Example: "The report was criticized for a lack of reference to previous studies on the topic."
Alternatives: "absence of citation" or "deficiency in sources".
Corrections for the outer plates ( > 60 Å) are much less effective owing to a lack of reference lines with adequate signal-to-noise ratio.
That is because there is a lack of reference data compiled from other people's DNA.
As mentioned before, due to a lack of reference lists, we can only observe the reduction of the sheer number of remaining terms for all the extracted lists.
No modern species comparisons of the two museum 'spinifex' samples were made due to a lack of reference material for Triodia resins.
The lack of resources in the classroom manifests in many ways, such as a lack of reference materials for students, no textbooks at all or only a few copies which students share, no writing paper for students, no paper or no ink for the printer, or no chalk and the list can go on.
Although these results cannot at present be used as a bloom metric to assess ecological status, due to a lack of reference conditions and class boundary values, they can be used to support classification decisions by expert judgement (Aroviita et al. [2012]).
A lack of references on hygroscopic and durability properties was observed.
Age-related and arthritis-related foot modifications have been described in literature, but there is a lack of references that allow shoes to be designed on the basis of specific anthropometric measurements of older women.
The lack of previous employment has also meant a lack of references to use in my applications, and while I accept that using my school form tutor and woman whose children I babysit may not be the most professionally impressive referees, I feel that employers could be more understanding of students trying to gain employment for the first time.
Disproving the idea that coatis are known as "Brazilian aardvarks" might be impossible at this point, not because Wikipedia's rules make it difficult to cite "a lack of references to 'Brazilian aardvarks' in published materials before July 2008" as a source but because it is not technically false.
It might surprise you but it's not that unusual for people to raise a lack of references as an issue when seeking a job.
