Equitable Citation Practice
Jodi Coalter, University Libraries (jcoalter@umd.edu)
Linda Macri, Graduate School (lmacri@umd.edu)
Research Equity Guide: https://lib.guides.umd.edu/ResearchEquity/CriticalCitation
Today’s agenda
What are we talking about: equitable citation, critical citation
Why does it matter?
What can be done -- and by whom?
How to create an equitable citation practice.
The role of diversity statements for your citations.
What we won’t be covering: how to cite sources in general (ask)
Citation practice in academic writing
Why do we do it??
Scholarship is Conversation
Citation notes expertise and authority.
As authors ourselves, our citations indicate who we have been in conversation with; they indicate our credibility by demonstrating who we look to as experts, who has informed our ideas.
What is critical citation practice
What do you think?
Knowing what you know about the power and use of citations in your discipline, what problems do you see arising from citation practice?
Why make citation choices based on the identity of the researcher?
Why make citation choices based on the identity of the researcher?
Why does citation matter?
“Citation behavior is the product of institutional structures and individual habits. Imbalances in citation behavior, therefore, are produced by both institutional biases and individual biases. By bias, we mean discriminatory (or, conversely, preferential) values, practices, or mechanisms, typically resulting in material, psychological, or physical harms.”
Dworkin, J., Zurn, P., & Bassett, D. S. (2020). (In) citing action to realize an equitable future. Neuron, 106(6), 890-894.
Why does citation matter?
“Beyond ignoring the potential power of confronting such imbalances when they appear, the focus on the decisions of a few key people obscures the ways in which many imbalances are created and perpetuated by researchers at all levels. One important example is imbalance in papers’ citation rates, the presence of which could have downstream effects on, for example, conference invitations, grant awards, promotion, inclusion in syllabi, and even student evaluations.”
Dworkin, J., Zurn, P., & Bassett, D. S. (2020). (In) citing action to realize an equitable future. Neuron, 106(6), 890-894.
Why does citation matter?
Prof. A. Lynn Bolles (Emerita)
Department of Anthropology
Why does citation matter?
In the US academy, the citation count is used as an essential mechanism to do three things for scholars: they render respect within the community of anthropologists, provide recognition of productive contributions (writing) which then leads to prominence in the field and the academy at large. A central part of academic writing is citation—the evaluation of the written work of others. Lutz states, “To engage in scholarship is to involve oneself with the ideas of others, to attempt to support, amend, or overturn them, but first of all to take them under consideration. The citation is an index of a judgment made by an anthropologist of the article in which the citation appears, that the persons cited has been taken seriously.” Citations implicate relations of power, both based on race and gender, and form of symbolic capital, for the cited author, as scholarly status or reputation depends, in part, on the frequency. Citation capital can be transformed not only into respect, recognition, and prominence but also into real capital in the form of higher salaries and merit pay, even for those whose institutions that are in financial distress. (67)
Bolles, L. (2013). Telling the story straight: Black feminist intellectual thought in anthropology. Transforming Anthropology, 21(1), 57-71.
Why does citation matter?
The academy has traditionally used authorship to create hyper-individualistic hierarchies of knowledge that can be monetized and catalogued according to capitalist and neoliberal measurements. This traditional system—built on the logics of heteropatriarchal white supremacy—inherently erases the invisible labor of those who help to build the genealogies of thought that contribute to all knowledge. Within this rubric, Black women have been systematically unnamed.
Smith, C. A., Williams, E. L., Wadud, I. A., Pirtle, W. N., & Cite Black Women Collective. (2021). Cite black women: A critical praxis (a statement). Feminist Anthropology.
What can be done?
Set goals and Plan!
Finding citations from BIPoC researchers in your field
What can be done?
Data Feminism Example
What can be done?
Data Feminism Example
What can be done?
Audit
Audit again (and again, and again…)
Get feedback
What can be done -- and by whom
It's simple: Cite Black Women. Black women have been producing knowledge since we blessed this earth. We theorize, we innovate, we revolutionize the world. We do not need mediators. We do not need interpreters. It is time to disrupt the canon. It is time to upturn the erasures of history. It is time to give credit where credit is due: cite Black women. Cite Black Women is more than just a catchphrase or a hashtag: it is an emphatic statement, a command, a rebuke, a call to action, a celebration, an act of rebellion, an ethos, and an act of love.
Smith, C. A., Williams, E. L., Wadud, I. A., Pirtle, W. N., & Cite Black Women Collective. (2021). Cite black women: A critical praxis (a statement). Feminist Anthropology.
Cite Black Women collective
Call to action from Cite Black Women
In January 2018, Christen Smith developed five guiding principles for Cite Black Women that outline what we believe to be essential steps to critically taking on the challenge of our practice:
Smith, C. A., Williams, E. L., Wadud, I. A., Pirtle, W. N., & Cite Black Women Collective. (2021). Cite black women: A critical praxis (a statement). Feminist Anthropology.
What can be done -- and by whom
“We provide a set of recommendations for how to address citation imbalances. Our suggestions are targeted to scholars in three canonical scientific roles: creators, arbiters, and reflectors. Tools to mitigate disparity can include: (1) a citation diversity statement to increase awareness, (2) publicly available and user-friendly software to estimate gender balance in a given paper’s reference list (Zhou et al., 2020), as well as extensions for common search engines like Google Scholar to show predicted gender of authors on papers, and (3) future research across journal impact factors, throughout diverse fields, and extending from assessments of gender imbalance to assessments of racial imbalance.”
Dworkin, J., Zurn, P., & Bassett, D. S. (2020). (In) citing action to realize an equitable future. Neuron, 106(6), 890-894.
What can be done -- and by whom
White women:
“When I initially heard her paper, I was particularly inspired that Bolles's approach put the onus on each of us. We—all of us—have an obligation to seek out and bolster innovative research by scholars whose work is too often sidelined. This cannot be an afterthought.”
Craven, C. (2021). Teaching Antiracist Citational Politics as a Project of Transformation: Lessons from the Cite Black Women Movement for White Feminist Anthropologists. Feminist Anthropology, 2(1), 120-129.
Ethical choices
There are two ethical models that might guide the development of an ethics of citation practice. The first, distributive model proposes that citations ought to be distributed equally, accurately reflecting the current diversity of the field. This model would require that neuroscience (and any other field interested in ethical citation practices) keep a regularly updated record of the gender distribution of its practitioners and then calculate the citation balance to reflect that distribution. Proponents would need to determine whether this record is to reflect faculty alone or also postdocs, graduate students, and undergraduate researchers. Regardless of that determination, the distributive model would be an improvement in the present situation, which is increasingly under-citing women’s contributions over time. It would not, however, aid in the project of increasing the future gender diversity of the field, nor would it redress past harms and perceptions of women and other underrepresented minority (URM) scholars as marginal to the field. The second, diversity model moves beyond the distributive model’s attachment to economic parity and instead pursues epistemic justice. Without harming present science, it aims, through affirmative action and reparative justice, to correct for eons of scientific history and usher in a different future. Whether one chooses an ethics of equality and precision or one of equity and generosity, an ethics of citation practice ought to be a vital part of our work as scientists.
(In)citing Action to Realize an Equitable Future
What are the resources in your field to help you ensure equity in your citations?
Examples from neuroscience
Databases that collate names of women across subdisciplines
For example: https://citeblackauthors.com/
Women in Neuroscience (http://winrepo.org)
Anne’s List (http://anneslist.net)
Charts current gender distribution of authors in the field:
BiasWatchNeuro (http://biaswatchneuro.com)
We do not seek to simply “inform” or set up networks but to serve as a resource and hub of knowledge production and circulation. We strive to make ourselves visible to each other and to the broader public. We are intentional about being seen, seeing others, and spreading knowledge. We believe in collective knowledge production while simultaneously honoring and respecting the individual contributions from each one of us. We seek to articulate, enact, and practice a politics of collectivity that can transform disciplines and challenge racism, sexism, and misogynoir (Bailey and Trudy 2018).
Citational politics are a politics of community, as Cite Black Women founder Christen A. Smith reminds us, that invites substantive engagement with one another.1 Citational politics, and ultimately praxis (putting one's citational politics into practice), can be inclusionary or exclusionary, but they are never neutral.
https://anthrosource-onlinelibrary-wiley-com.proxy-um.researchport.umd.edu/doi/full/10.1002/fea2.12036
What is a diversity statement for citations?
From Biomedical Sciences:
“The inclusion of a citation diversity statement has been proposed to increase awareness and help correct citation imbalances. These statements should include the proportion of references cited by gender and/or race and ethnicity and appear directly before the reference list. Citation diversity statements serve two purposes. First, by analyzing the authorship of papers included in their reference list, authors may attempt to improve their citation balance. Second, the statements can draw readers’ attention to the problem of citation imbalances and hopefully motivate them to re-evaluate their own work.”
Rowson, B., Duma, S. M., King, M. R., Efimov, I., Saterbak, A., & Chesler, N. C. (2021). Citation diversity statement in BMES journals.
What is a diversity statement for citations?
From Biomedical Sciences:
“Recent work in several fields of science has identified a bias in citation practices such that papers from women and other minority scholars are undercited relative to the number of papers in the field.4,7,9,11,12 Here, we sought to proactively consider choosing references that reflect the diversity of the field in thought, form of contribution, gender, race, ethnicity, and other factors. First, we obtained the predicted gender of the first and last author of each reference by using databases that store the probability of a first name being carried by a woman.9,18 By this measure (and excluding self-citations to the first and last authors of our current paper), our references contain 31% woman(first)/woman(last), 31% man/woman, 19% woman/man, and 19% man/man. This method is limited in that a) names, pronouns, and social media profiles used to construct the databases may not, in every case, be indicative of gender identity and b) it cannot account for intersex, non-binary, or transgender people. Second, we obtained predicted racial/ethnic category of the first and last author of each reference by databases that store the probability of a first and last name being carried by an author of color.1,16 By this measure (and excluding self-citations), our references contain 2% author of color (first)/author of color(last), 9% white author/author of color, 20% author of color/white author, and 69% white author/white author. This method is limited in that (a) names and Florida voter data used to make the predictions may not be indicative of racial/ethnic identity, and (b) it cannot account for Indigenous and mixed-race authors, or those who may face differential biases due to the ambiguous racialization or ethnicization of their names. We look forward to future work that could help us to better understand how to support equitable practices in science.”
Rowson, B., Duma, S. M., King, M. R., Efimov, I., Saterbak, A., & Chesler, N. C. (2021). Citation diversity statement in BMES journals.
Questions?
Thank you!
Jodi Coalter (jcoalter@umd.edu )
Linda Macri (lmacri@umd.edu)
References
Bailey, M. (2018). On misogynoir: Citation, erasure, and plagiarism. Feminist Media Studies, 18(4), 762–768. https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2018.1447395
Bolles, L. (2013). Telling the story straight: Black feminist intellectual thought in anthropology. Transforming Anthropology, 21(1), 57-71.
Chakravartty, P., Kuo, R., Grubbs, V., & McIlwain, C. (2018). #CommunicationSoWhite. Journal of Communication, 68(2), 254–266. https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqy003
Coalter, J., & Wilson, S. (2021) Teaching Critical Citation: Empowering Students and Researchers Through Citation Practice. https://doi.org/10.13016/jtr3-lijk
Craven, C. (2021). Teaching Antiracist Citational Politics as a Project of Transformation: Lessons from the Cite Black Women Movement for White Feminist Anthropologists. Feminist Anthropology, 2(1), 120-129.
Delgado, R., & Stefancic, J. (2017). Critical Race Theory: An Introduction (Third). NYU Press.
D’Ignazio, C., & Klein, L. F. (2020). Data Feminism. MIT Press.
References
Dworkin, J., Zurn, P., & Bassett, D. S. (2020). (In) citing action to realize an equitable future. Neuron, 106(6), 890-894.
Guzmán, R. L. (2020, June 10). How to Cite Like a Badass Tech Feminist Scholar of Color. Medium. https://points.datasociety.net/how-to-cite-like-a-badass-tech-feminist-scholar-of-color-ebc839a3619c
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
Rowson, B., Duma, S. M., King, M. R., Efimov, I., Saterbak, A., & Chesler, N. C. (2021). Citation diversity statement in BMES journals.
Smith, C. A., Williams, E. L., Wadud, I. A., Pirtle, W. N., & Cite Black Women Collective. (2021). Cite black women: A critical praxis (a statement). Feminist Anthropology.
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.