The purpose of this master thesis is to acknowledge and explore the use of fiction literature in scientific research. Six influential and classical novels within western culture is bibliometrically traced through the index database Web of Science. Both quantitative citation analysis and qualitative content analysis are applied, the later with the help of open coding and grounded theory. The quantitative research examines and reveals to which extent the novels are used as references in English language scientific articles, the oldest dated back to 1950, and how articles published between 2010-2018 are distributed over fields of research and the distribution between countries and author gender. The qualitative research also covers the reference position in the article text, other fiction that are co-cited with the chosen novels of this study and also themes or categories for use of the fiction references in 180 scientific articles, published between 2010-2018, that are analysed in full text. Five categories where developed for the use of the novels in the analysed articles. These five categories are Epigraph, Illustration, Theory construction, Partof study method and Other use.