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Citation justice: A critical look at citation practices

This guide provides and introduction to the politics of citation.

Resources


Readings which helped inform this guide

General works on citation justice

University of California Office of Scholarly Communication. (n.d.). Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Scholarly Communication. Retrieved June 3, 2024, from https://osc.universityofcalifornia.edu/scholarly-publishing/diversity-equity-and-inclusion-in-scholarly-communication/

Dworkin, J., Zurn, P., & Bassett, D. S. (2020). (In)citing action to realize an equitable future. Neuron, 106(6), 890–894. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2020.05.011

Fowler, M. (2020). Citation Justice. Nursing Inquiry, 27(1), e12331. https://doi.org/10.1111/nin.12331

Jacob-Owens, T. C., & Münchmeyer, M. (2021). United for diversity? Peer review and the politics of citation. 13, 1–8. https://doi.org/10.2924/EJLS.2021.001

Kwon, D. (2022). The rise of citational justice: How scholars are making references fairer. Nature, 603(7902), 568–571. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-00793-1

Mott, C., & Cockayne, D. (2017). Citation matters: Mobilizing the politics of citation toward a practice of ‘conscientious engagement.’ Gender, Place & Culture, 24(7), 954–973. https://doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2017.1339022

Schmidt, J. (2022). Whom we cite: A reflection on the limits and potentials of critical citation practices. In A. Day, D. S. P. Thomas, J. Spickard, & L. Lee (Eds.), Diversity, Inclusion, and Decolonization: Practical Tools for Improving Teaching, Research, and Scholarship (pp. 170–185). Bristol University Press. https://doi.org/10.46692/9781529216677.013

Gender and citation

Coman, J. (2018, November 27). Trans citation practices—A quick-and-dirty guideline. Medium. https://mxcoman.medium.com/trans-citation-practices-a-quick-and-dirty-guideline-9f4168117115

Davenport, E., & Snyder, H. (1995). Who cites women? Whom do women cite? An exploration of gender and scholarly citation in sociology. Journal of Documentation, 51(4), 404–410. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb026958

Dickersin, K., Fredman, L., Flegal, K. M., Scott, J. D., & Crawley, B. (1998). Is there a sex bias in choosing editors? Epidemiology journals as an example. JAMA, 280(3), 260–264. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.280.3.260

Dion, M. L., Sumner, J. L., & Mitchell, S. M. (2018). Gendered citation patterns across political science and social science methodology fields. Political Analysis, 26(3), 312–327. https://doi.org/10.1017/pan.2018.12

Earhart, A. E., Risam, R., & Bruno, M. (2021). Citational politics: Quantifying the influence of gender on citation in Digital Scholarship in the Humanities. Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, 36(3), 581–594. https://doi.org/10.1093/llc/fqaa011

Eichmann-Kalwara, N., Jorgensen, J., & Weingart, S. B. (2018). Representation at Digital Humanities Conferences (2000–2015). In E. Losh & J. Wernimont (Eds.), Bodies of Information (pp. 72–92). University of Minnesota Press. https://doi.org/10.5749/j.ctv9hj9r9.9

Elletson, G. (2019, July 12). How should professors cite their transgender colleagues’ work produced under past identities? Academe is trying to figure it out. The Chronicle of Higher Education. https://www.chronicle.com/article/how-should-professors-cite-their-transgender-colleagues-work-produced-under-past-identities-academe-is-trying-to-figure-it-out/

Larivière, V., Ni, C., Gingras, Y., Cronin, B., & Sugimoto, C. R. (2013). Bibliometrics: Global gender disparities in science. Nature, 504(7479), 211–213. https://doi.org/10.1038/504211a

Murdie, A. (2018). We need a new international norm: Eradicating the gender citation gap. Political Analysis, 26(3), 345–347. https://doi.org/10.1017/pan.2018.27

Rossiter, M. W. (1993). The Matthew Matilda effect in science. Social Studies of Science, 23(2), 325–341. https://doi.org/10.1177/03063129302300200

Smith, C. A., Williams, E. L., Wadud, I. A., Pirtle, W. N. L., & The Cite Black Women Collective. (2021). Cite black women: A critical praxis (a statement). Feminist Anthropology, 2(1), 10–17. https://doi.org/10.1002/fea2.12040

Thieme, K., & Saunders, M. A. S. (2018). How do you wish to be cited? Citation practices and a scholarly community of care in trans studies research articles. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 32, 80–90. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2018.03.010

Wang, X., Dworkin, J. D., Zhou, D., Stiso, J., Falk, E. B., Bassett, D. S., Zurn, P., & Lydon-Staley, D. M. (2021). Gendered citation practices in the field of communication. Annals of the International Communication Association, 45(2), 134–153. https://doi.org/10.1080/23808985.2021.1960180

Ethnic diversity and citation

AlShebli, B. K., Rahwan, T., & Woon, W. L. (2018). The preeminence of ethnic diversity in scientific collaboration. Nature Communications, 9(1), 5163. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-07634-8

Bhopal, R. (2004). Glossary of terms relating to ethnicity and race: For reflection and debate. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 58(6), 441–445. https://doi.org/10.1136/jech.2003.013466

Delgado, R. (1984). The Imperial scholar: Reflections on a review of Civil Rights literature. University of Pennsylvania Law Review, 132(3), 561–578. https://doi.org/10.2307/3311882

Delgado, R. (1995). Colonial scholar: Do outsider authors replicate the citation practices of the insiders, but in reverse, the  symposium on trends in legal citations and scholarship. Chicago-Kent Law Review, 71(3), 969–988.

Eichmann-Kalwara, N., Jorgensen, J., & Weingart, S. B. (2018). Representation at Digital Humanities Conferences (2000–2015). In E. Losh & J. Wernimont (Eds.), Bodies of Information (pp. 72–92). University of Minnesota Press. https://doi.org/10.5749/j.ctv9hj9r9.9

Freeman, R. B., & Huang, W. (2015). Collaborating with people like me: Ethnic coauthorship within the United States. Journal of Labor Economics, 33, S289–S318. https://doi.org/10.1086/678973

Inefuku, H.W. (2021). Relegated to the margins: Faculty of color, the scholarly record, and the necessity of antiracist library disruptions. In S. Y. Leung & Lopez-McKnight, J. R. (Eds.), Knowledge justice: Disrupting library and information studies through Critical Race Theory (pp. 197–216). The MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/11969.003.0014

Ray, V. (n.d.). The Racial Politics of Citation. Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved April 8, 2024, from https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2018/04/27/racial-exclusions-scholarly-citations-opinion

Roth, W. D. (2016). The multiple dimensions of race. Ethnic and Racial Studies. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01419870.2016.1140793

Smith, C. A., Williams, E. L., Wadud, I. A., Pirtle, W. N. L., & The Cite Black Women Collective. (2021). Cite black women: A critical praxis (a statement). Feminist Anthropology, 2(1), 10–17. https://doi.org/10.1002/fea2.12040

Teich, E. G., Kim, J. Z., Lynn, C. W., Simon, S. C., Klishin, A. A., Szymula, K. P., Srivastava, P., Bassett, L. C., Zurn, P., Dworkin, J. D., & Bassett, D. S. (2022). Citation inequity and gendered citation practices in contemporary physics. Nature Physics, 18(10), 1161–1170. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-022-01770-1

West, J. D., Jacquet, J., King, M. M., Correll, S. J., & Bergstrom, C. T. (2013). The role of gender in scholarly authorship. PloS One, 8(7), e66212. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0066212

Decolonization

Chilisa, B. (2012). Indigenous research methodologies. SAGE Publications.

Christian, D. (2017). Gathering knowledge: Indigenous methodologies of land/place-based visual storytelling/filmmaking and visual sovereignty [University of British Columbia]. https://doi.org/10.14288/1.0343529

MacLeod, L. (2021). More than personal communication: Templates for citing Indigenous Elders and Knowledge Keepers. KULA: Knowledge Creation, Dissemination, and Preservation Studies, 5(1), 1–5. https://doi.org/10.18357/kula.135

Smith, L. T. (2021). Decolonizing methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (Third edition.). Zed.

The politics of citation: Is the peer review process biased against Indigenous academics? (2018, February 23). CBC Radio. https://www.cbc.ca/radio/unreserved/decolonizing-the-classroom-is-there-space-for-indigenous-knowledge-in-academia-1.4544984/the-politics-of-citation-is-the-peer-review-process-biased-against-indigenous-academics-1.4547468

Wilson, S. (2008). Research is ceremony: Indigenous research methods. Fernwood Publishing.

Diversity in course reading lists

Bird, K. S. (2022). How ‘diverse’ is your reading list? Tools, tips, and challenges. In A. Day, D. S. P. Thomas, J. Spickard, & L. Lee (Eds.), Diversity, Inclusion, and Decolonization: Practical Tools for Improving Teaching, Research, and Scholarship (pp. 97–109). Bristol University Press. https://doi.org/10.46692/9781529216677.008

Thomas, D. S. P. (2022). Pluralised realities: Reviewing reading lists to make them more culturally sensitive. In A. Day, D. S. P. Thomas, J. Spickard, & L. Lee (Eds.), Diversity, Inclusion, and Decolonization: Practical Tools for Improving Teaching, Research, and Scholarship (pp. 110–124). Bristol University Press. https://doi.org/10.46692/9781529216677.009

Diversity statements

Sweet, D. J. (2021). New at Cell Press: The inclusion and diversity statement. Cell, 184(1), 1–2. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2020.12.019

Zurn, P., Bassett, D. S., & Rust, N. C. (2020). The citation diversity statement: A Practice of transparency, A way of life. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 24(9), 669–672. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2020.06.009

Searching and research

Asubiaro, T., Onaolapo, S., & Mills, D. (2024). Regional disparities in Web of Science and Scopus journal coverage. Scientometrics, 129(3), 1469–1491. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-024-04948-x

Dalton, S. (2023). Databases covering research outputs from the Global South [Google Docs]. University of Leeds Library. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1N2Wf1i1sqZzcFk6SlNLbdMOZn6MRUj1L/view?usp=embed_facebook

Howard, S. A., & Knowlton, S. A. (2018). Browsing through bias: The Library of Congress classification and subject headings for African American Studies and LGBTQIA Studies. Library Trends, 67(1), 74–88.

Jolivétte, A. (2015). Research justice: Methodologies for social change. Policy Press.

Noble, S. U. (2018). Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism. New York University Press. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uvic/detail.action?docID=4834260

Sloan, L. (2016). Social science “lite”? Deriving demographic proxies from Twitter. In Sloan, Luke & Quan-Haase, Anabel (Eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Social Media Research Methods (pp. 90–104). SAGE Publications Ltd. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781473983847

Stevens, N., Hoffmann, A. L., & Florini, S. (2021). The unremarked optimum: Whiteness, optimization, and control in the database revolution. Review of Communication, 21(2), 113–128. https://doi.org/10.1080/15358593.2021.1934521

Tennant, J. P. (2020). Web of Science and Scopus are not global databases of knowledge. European Science Editing, 46, e51987. https://doi.org/10.3897/ese.2020.e51987

Positionality

Jacobson, D., & Mustafa, N. (2019). Social identity map: A reflexivity tool for practicing explicit positionality in critical qualitative research. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1177/1609406919870075

Rowe, W. E. (2014). Positionality. In Coghlan, David & Brydon-Miller, Mary (Eds.), The SAGE Encyclopedia of Action Research (Vol. 2, p. 628). SAGE Publications Ltd. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781446294406

Data justice

DGMT - Data Governance & Management Toolkit. (n.d.). Retrieved June 18, 2024, from https://indigenousdatatoolkit.ca/about-this-toolkit/

Office of Regional & International Community Engagement, & Gender+ Collective. (2022). Community-Based Research & Data Justice Resource Guide by the Gender+ Collective. University of British Columbia. https://orice.ubc.ca/wp-content/uploads/sites/43/2022/06/2022-Gender-Guide-1.pdf

Puebla, I., Lowenberg, D., & FORCE11 Research Data Publishing Ethics Working Group. (2021). Joint FORCE11 & COPE Research Data Publishing Ethics Working Group Recommendations. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5391293

Library instruction

Campbell, H., & Sich, D. (2023). Library curriculum as epistemic justice: Decolonizing library instruction programs. Canadian Journal of Academic Librarianship / Revue Canadienne de Bibliothéconomie Universitaire, 9, 1–39. https://doi.org/10.33137/cjal-rcbu.v9.40964

Chenevey, L. (2023). Teaching the politics of citation: Challenging students’ perceptions. College & Research Libraries News, 84(5). https://doi.org/10.5860/crln.84.5.152


Other guides

Baer, A. (2024). Inclusive Citation [LibGuide]. Rowan University Library. https://libguides.rowan.edu/inclusive_citation

Coalter, J. (2023). Citation for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion [LibGuide]. Michigan State University Libraries. https://libguides.lib.msu.edu/CitationHome

Gammons, R. (2023). Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Research [LibGuide]. University of Maryland Libraries. https://lib.guides.umd.edu/ResearchEquity/home

Isbister, C. (2023). Citation justice [LibGuide]. The University of British Columbia Library. https://guides.library.ubc.ca/citationjustice/home

University of Toronto Libraries. (2023). Thinking Critically about Citation [LibGuide]. https://guides.library.utoronto.ca/c.php?g=251103&p=5297972


Presentations

McKie, B. (2020, November 2). Decolonizing citations [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSqkdo91gn8

Creative Commons License
This work by The University of Victoria Libraries is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License unless otherwise indicated when material has been used from other sources.