Abstract: Through analyzing the citing and cited references of Zhang Qiyu’s papers, we can comprehensively understand his academic development process and academic contribution. Based on citation content analysis, this article first identifies the research topics of Zhang Qiyu’s papers, and analyzes the ideological sources. Then it obtains the documents citing Zhang Qiyu’s papers, and analyzes these documents from the perspective of subject distribution, citation context, citation position, temporal distribution, in order to clearly understand Zhang’s academic influence. The research results confirm that Zhang Qiyu has not only established the pioneering theory foundation of Information Languages (IL) discipline, but also come up with practical approaches to guide follow-up researchers. Whether the innovation is big or small, Zhang Qiyu’s research has significant influence, and he sets a good example to “good scholars” and “good researcher”.