Feminist citation practices (Spring into Methods)

Slides for Spring into Methods: Feminist Research Across Universities, 25 April 2024, University of Stirling.

1. Feminist citational practices
Dr Lauren Smith
Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh
SGSSS Spring into Methods
Feminist Research Methods Across Universities: Research practice, process & power relations
University of Stirling, 25th April 2024

2. Problem
Exploration of
citational injustice and
why it matters
Praxis
Strategies for more
inclusive citation
practices
Perspective
Consideration of wider
academic/social
changes to create
conditions for equity

3. Problem

4. What is citation?
●
“Critical mechanism for recognising and validating the research claims and assertions
of other scholars” (Wu, 2024b)
●
“Contribute to the dissemination of knowledge by guiding readers to relevant
literature and more” (Wu, 2024b)
●
Performativity: signalling knowledge, belonging to a community, flattering powerful
readers
●
Academic politics: “Who cites who is not a neutral game.” (Thomson, 2018)

5. The power
of citation
(Why it matters)

6. Scholarly communication:
“[t]he system through which research and other scholarly writings are
created, evaluated for quality, disseminated to the scholarly community,
and preserved for future use. The system includes both formal means of
communication, such as publication in peer-reviewed journals, and
informal channels, such as electronic listservs."(ACRL, 2005)

7. “Following the logic of continuous progress
in scientific research, where each work builds
on each other, we learn that it is necessary to
thoroughly reflect on the work that has
already been done on a specific question, to
be able to draw new conclusions from
enquiring, criticizing or highlighting new
aspects of a problem.”
(Templin, 2021)

8. “…our practices of citation make and remake our fields, making some forms of
knowledge peripheral. We often cite those who are more famous, even if their
contributions appropriate subaltern ways of knowing. We also often cite those who
frame problems in ways that speak against us. Over time, our citation practices
become repetitive; we cite the same people we cited as newcomers to a
conversation. Our practices persist without consideration of the politics of linking
projects to the same tired reference lists.”
(Gaztambide-Fernández, Tuck and Yang, 2015)
Citation as
reproductive
technology
(Ahmed, 2013)

9. “Citation is a feminist memory.
Citation is how we acknowledge
our debt to those who came
before; those who helped us find
our way when the way was
obscured because we deviated
from the paths we were told to
follow.”
(Sara Ahmed, 2017)

10. ●
Use of citations for assessment purposes
○
Central to the academic incentive system (Merton, 1996)
○
Used as indicators of influence and measures of impact
○
Citation-based metrics as evaluative instruments in academic research
landscape
○
Resource distribution (grants, salary, hiring, promotion, job security) based on
citation measures

12. Inequality in citation
●
Papers authored by women are significantly under-cited, and papers authored by men are
significantly over-cited (Teichet al., 2022)
●
Gender disparities exist in citation recognition, with female authors receiving less recognition
than male authors (Nettasingheet al., 2021)
●
Female primary authors receive fewer citations than men (Huang et al., 2020)
●
Female first authors are cited less than male first authors, even when controlling for experience
and area of research (Mohammed et al., 2020)
●
Women publish less, and their work is also disproportionally cited less by others in the field
(Odic and Wojcik, 2020)

13. ●
The citation imbalance in reference lists favorsmen as first and last
authors, driven largely by men's citation practices (Wang et al., 2021)
●
Gender disparities in the patterns of peer citations are strong enough
to accurately predict the scholar's gender (Lermanet al., 2022)
●
Female scholars' papers are systematically more viewed, yet
significantly less cited than male scholarship (Rajkóetal., 2023)
(Extracted from Wu, 2024a)

14. Men cite their previous
first-authored papers at a
37% higher rate than
women
(Murphy, 2017)

15. Explanations: article-level (Wu, 2023)
○
Women's research is undervalued
○
Women's underrepresentation
○
Homophily -researchers are more inclined to cite the work of
individuals of their own gender
○
Gender bias in self-citing

16. Explanations: author-level (Wu, 2023)
○
Differences in the number of articles men and women publish
○
Women's lower research productivity
○
Women's lack of research collaborations with local or national and international
colleagues
○
Women's lower levels of specialization
○
Family roles and differences in greater service responsibilities
○
Women's shorter publishing career lengths and higher dropout rates

18. “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 laborof
those who help to build the genealogies of thought that contribute to all
knowledge. Within this rubric, Black women have been systematically unnamed.”
(Smith et al., 2021)

19. Language and translation
●
“Inequitable politics of translation” means scholarly work of Black
feminists publishing in languages other than English and outwith
Europe and US struggle to reach mainstream global audiences (Alvarez
and Caldwell, 2016 in Smith et al., 2021)

20. Disability
●
“Modes and technologies of neoliberalism work to constitute and perpetuate ableist
practices, ideologies, and discourses, and in so doing, work to disavow the crip
temporalities by which disabled people live”
○
‘Crip’ is a reclaimed word that resignifiesthe pathology of disability (Rodgers et al., 2023)
●
Ableism and barriers to disabled academics being able to participate in academic
communities, teaching, research, scholarly publishing etc.

21. Challenges with
efforts to assess or
address injustice

22. Tokenism (and worse) of reading lists
●
“When feminist work is included, it…coincides with token efforts to
include women in otherwise overwhelmingly male-dominated reading
lists” (Duriesmith, 2020)
●
Items added to and audited on reading/reference lists based on
assumption of gender or race from name and other identifiers

23. Self-marginalisation
●
In the context of IR/GIR
●
Auditing practices that assess the contributions of feminist authors in relation to
the mainstream scholarship
●
Trying to convince disciplinary audience that feminist work contributes ‘to the
discipline’
●
Mainstream sets the agenda and definitions in non-feminist and non-gendered
terms
●
Paradox of auditing –reproduces preoccupation with [IR] itself as a discipline
(Squires and Weldes, 2007)

24. Praxis

25. “Who you choose to cite has an
impact on who you see in the
classroom, who does research, and
stays in academia”
(University of Maryland Library,
2023)

26. ●
Consistent refusal of ‘malestream’ to engage with feminist scholarship (Duriesmith,
2020)
●
Resisting demands for feminist scholars to cite authors “who would never afford them
the same level of serious consideration” (Duriesmith, 2020)
●
“Epistemic erasure of Black women from the literal and figurative bibliographies of the
world” (Smith, 2021) e.g. misogynoir (Trudy, 2014) and intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1989)

27. Purposes of feminist/critical citation practices
●
Citation justice: “the act of citing authors based on identify to uplift
marginalized voices with the knowledge that citation is used as a form
of power in a patriarchal society based on white supremacy” (University
of Maryland Libraries, 2023)
●
Transformation of disciplines
●
Challenging racism, sexism and misogynoir

28. “…we need to become
more comfortable with
refusing to cite work
that does not align with
our own priorities”
(Duriesmith, 2020)

29. Awareness of the landscape
●
Awareness of bibliographic databases –using them, not just Google Scholar
●
Considering how advanced search techniques can be used to reduce bias in literature
searching
●
Using Global south databases
●
Exploring scholarly publishing landscape in your subject area using Web of Science
and Google Scholar to get a sense of who is publishing, who dominant voices are,
where they are (and who would benefit from amplification)

30. Web of Science (and Google Scholar)

31. Reading and searching widely
●
Using academic databases can retrieve results that may not be
encountered on Google Scholar because of algorithmic bias
●
Less “prestigious” journals can provide more diverse research
(Mason and Merga, 2021)
●
Citation mining can be used to find pockets of discourse (using
homophily in citations to your advantage)

32. Auditing citations
●
Auditing citations throughout the
writing process is crucial to ensuring
a diversity of perspectives is
included in your bibliography
●
Using these tools may help you
measure the diversity in your list
(University of Maryland Library, 2023)
Tracking Authors Template
A Google Sheet template that helps you
keep track of authors you want to cite
Auditing Citations
A Google Sheets template that helps you
get started with an audit of your citations

33. Coding tools
(University of Maryland Library, 2023)
Code to AnalyzeYour Bibliography
A code that helps you first clean up your bibliography, then identifies authors based on race and
gender (by percentage possibility)using a .bib file. Allows you to quickly identify the diversity in your
own bibliography. Instructions are included
Gender Citation Balance Index (GCBI) Tool
Copy and paste your bibliography and DOIs to quickly determine the GCBI for your citations

34. Building networks
●
Exploring translation opportunities
●
Transnational collaboration on research projects
●
Disrupting imperialistic hierarchies of knowledge (Smith, 2021)

35. Understanding and challenging hierarchies of knowledge
●
“We recognise all sites and contexts in which knowledge is produced”
(Smith et al., 2021)
●
Does your field need to be adopting or applying hierarchies of
knowledge from a field where there is a use case for it
(but where it is increasingly weaponised –c.f. Cass)

36. Self-citing
“Men cite their previous first-authored papers at a 37%
higher rate than women” (Murphy, 2017)
If you can’t beat them…

37. #CiteBlackWomen
1.Read Black women's work
2.Integrate Black women into the CORE of your
syllabus (in life & in the classroom)
3.Acknowledge Black women's intellectual
production
4.Make space for Black women to speak
5.Give Black women the space and time to breathe

38. A challenge

39. “Reflect on the way you approach referencing
the work of others in your own writing,
presenting and thinking. Whose work do you
build on to make arguments, describe the field
and the problems you engage in your work?
Who are you citing, and why do you cite them
(and not others)?”
(Tuck, Yang and
Gaztambide-Fernández, 2015)

40. “When doing literature reviews,
when reviewing articles, and when
drafting your manuscripts, ask
yourself: Where are the Black
women authors? If they are not
there, seek them out. Do the work.”
(Smith et al., 2021)

41. Use metrics responsibly
●
Research should be assessed on its own merits
●
Critically consider
○
Journal-level metrics: impact factors for journals can be skewed by highly
cited outliers, can’t assume all research in same journal is high quality
○
Individual-level metrics: can be skewed by self-citing etc.
○
Alt-metrics: can be gamed through self-citing and buying likes
●
Use a range of metrics to measure impact, and remember impact is not always a
proxy for quality
(@EdNapLib Researcher Skills Forum, 2024)

42. Citation diversity statements
“Citation diversity statements are often
optional statements published at the end of
an article that describes how an author
considered equity, diversity, and inclusion in
their citation practice. These are often quite
short, and discuss both successes and
shortcomings in the practice.”
(University of Maryland Library, 2023)
Inclusion and Diversity Statement
“We worked to ensure sex balance in the
selection of non-human subjects. One or
more of the authors of this paper self-
identifies as living with a disability. One or
more of the authors of this paper received
support from a program designed to increase
minority representation in science. The
author list of this paper includes
contributors from the location where the
research was conducted who participated in
the data collection, design, analysis, and/or
interpretation of the work.” (Sweet, 2022)

43. In summary, get good at:
●
Understanding intersectional inequalities in your field
●
Identifying appropriate subject databases for your field
●
Effective searching of academic subject databases
●
Considering the relevance of grey literature and lived experience in your
research area
●
Learning how to find it online (alternative search engines to Google)
●
Justifying your citational praxis

44. Perspective

45. Bigger
picture
Citational practices as part of
wider individual and
structural shifts

46. ●
Women are cited less than men at the career level
●
Some evidence to suggest at article level, they’re actually cited more
●
Inequality in number of citations may be more to do with women not publishing as
many articles as men (Wu, 2024)
●
Women's disadvantages in career progression as the root causes for the gender
citation gap (Wu, 2023)
●
Systemic injustices make it more difficult for women to publish

47. Structural/systemic challenges to address
●
Achieving equity in funding, research and publication
●
Making HE possible to work in for disabled / chronically ill people
●
Stopping HE from making people disabled / chronically ill
●
Addressing pay gaps in higher education
●
Reducing emphasis on use of metrics / ‘impact’ focus / REF
●
Making knowledge accessible –removing paywalls, increasing open access
●
Tackling inbuilt bias in AI –especially if used for systematic reviews
●
Anything else…?

48. “Empowering marginalized scholars
through recognition, escaping the grips of
data cartels, embracing free and public
resources, and ensuring that those
resources are available to everyone brings
citation practices into closer alignment
with justice.”
(Levendowski, 2023)

49. Scholarship as activism
●
Using expertise and voice
●
Advocating and speaking up
●
Responding when people do
not attribute terms to the
originators (e.g. Katy Perry re:
misogynoir)
“Many folks tweeted and blogged so that my name was associated with the
term I coined. These Black women digital users were pointing out the irony of
Katy Perry being heralded as the one who introduced misogynoir to the public
at the same time that the creator of the term was almost erased.”
(Bailey, 2018)

50. Resisting AI
●
Promises of high powered AI tools to conduct literature searches
●
Datasets used to train AI contain inherent assumptions of those training them
●
How will they make sure to include under-represented voices?
●
Can they?
●
Will they serve to reproduce existing biased, unjust culture of academic citation (and
worse)?

51. Stable Diffusion
●
An analysis of more than 50,000 images created with
Stable Diffusion found that it takes racial and gender
disparities to extremes –worse than those found in the
real world.
●
“We are essentially projecting a single worldview out into
the world, instead of representing diverse kinds of cultures
or visual identities” (Luccioniin Nicoletti and Bass, 2023)
●
“Because it simultaneously amplifies both gender and
racial stereotypes, Stable Diffusion tends to produce its
most skewed representations of reality when it comes to
women with darker skin”
(Nicoletti and Bass, 2023)

52. Final
thought

53. “The wall keeps its
place so it is you
that becomes sore.”
(Ahmed, 2013)

54. Thank you
Thank you to Maddie Breeze for the
opportunity to speak with you, Maha Bali
for critical thoughts on AI (and slide
template!), Amanda Lewendowskifor
thoughts on just citation and
recommended readings
Time for
questions
and
reflections
What one
thing will
you commit
to?

55. References
Ahmed, S. (2013) ‘Making feminist points’. Available at: https://feministkilljoys.com/2013/09/11/making-feminist-points/(Accessed: 23 April 2024).
Ahmed, S. (2015) Living a feminist life. NC: Duke University Press.
Association of College and Research Libraries (2005) ‘Scholarly communication toolkit’. Available at: https://acrl.libguides.com/scholcomm/toolkit/(Accessed 23 April 2024).
Bailey, M. and Trudy (2018) ‘On misogynoir: citation, erasure, and plagiarism’, Feminist Media Studies, 18(4), pp. 762–768. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2018.1447395
Brown, N. and Leigh, J. (2020) Ableism in academia: theorising experiences of disabilities and chronic illnesses in higher education. UCL Press. Available at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv13xprjr(Accessed 23 April
2024).
Carlier, A. et al. (2022) ‘Aspirational metrics –A guide for working towards citational justice’. LSE Impact Blog, 16 May. Available at: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2022/05/16/aspirational-metrics-a-
guide-for-working-towards-citational-justice/(Accessed: 23 April 2024).
Dunleavy, P. (2017) ‘Citations are more than merely assigning credit –their inclusion (or not) conditions how colleagues regardand evaluate your work’, Impact of Social Sciences, 6 April. Available at:
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2017/04/06/citations-are-more-than-merely-assigning-credit/(Accessed: 23 April 2024).
Gaztambide-Fernández, R., Tuck, E. and Yang,K.W. (2015) ‘Citation practice challenge’,Critical Ethnics Studies. Available at: https://www.criticalethnicstudiesjournal.org/citation-practices(Accessed: 23 April 2024).
Ghiasi, G. et al.(2018) ‘Gender homophily in citations’, in Proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on Science and Technology Indicators. Leiden. Available at: https://hdl.handle.net/1887/64521(Accessed: 23
April 2024).
Mason, S. and Merga, M.K. (2021) ‘Less ‘prestigious’ journals can contain more diverse research, by citing them we can shape a more just politics of citation’. LSE Impact Blog, 11 October. Available at:
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2021/10/11/less-prestigious-journals-can-contain-more-diverse-research-by-citing-them-we-can-shape-a-more-just-politics-of-citation/(Accessed 23 April 2024).

56. Merton, R.K. (1996) On social structure and science. London: University of Chicago Press.
Nicoletti, L. and Bass, D. (2023) ‘Humans are biased. Generative AI is even worse’. Bloomberg Technology + Equality. Available at: https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2023-generative-ai-bias/(Accessed:
23 April 2024).
Smith, C.A., Williams, E.L., Wadud, I.A. and Pirtle, W.N.L. (2021)’Cite black women: a critical praxis (a statement)’, Feminist Anthropology,1(2), pp. 10-17. Available at:
https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/fea2.12040(Accessed: 23 April 2024).
Sweet, D. (2021) ‘The inclusion and diversity statement –one year on’, CellPress. Available at: https://www.cell.com/news-do/inclusion-and-diversity-statement-update-2022(Accessed 23 April 2024).
Templin, C. (2021) ‘Why citation matters: ideas on a feminist approach to research’, FreieUniversität Berlin Blog Abv Gender & Diversitykompetenz. Available at:https://blogs.fu-berlin.de/abv-gender-
diversity/2022/01/10/why-citation-matters-ideas-on-a-feminist-approach-to-research/(Accessed: 23 April 2024).
Thomson, P. (2018) ‘For the reader –citations, reference lists, tables of contents and indexes’, Patter. Available at: https://patthomson.net/2018/04/16/for-the-reader-citations-foot-notes-reference-lists-
and-indexes/(Accessed 23 April 2024).
University of Maryland Libraries (2023) ‘Diversity, equity and inclusion in research: citation justice’. Available at: https://lib.guides.umd.edu/ResearchEquity/CitationJustice(Accessed 23 April 2024).
Worrall, J.L. and Cohn, E.G. (2023) ‘Citation data and analysis: limitations and shortcomings’, Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice, 39(3), pp. 327-340. Available at:
https://doi.org/10.1177/10439862231170972
Wu, C.(2023) ‘The gender citation gap: why and how it matters’,Canadian Review of Sociology/Revue canadiennede sociologie,60(2),pp. 188–211.Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/cars.12428
Wu,C.(2024a) ‘The gender citation gap: Approaches, explanations, and implications’,Sociology Compass, e13189. Available at:https://doi.org/10.1111/soc4.13189
Wu, C. (2024b) ‘Why are women cited less than men?’ LSE Impact Blog. Available at: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2024/03/25/why-are-women-cited-less-than-men/(Accessed 22 April
2024)

57. Further reading on inequalities
●
Intersectional Inequalities in Science (no date). Available at: https://sciencebias.uni.lu/app/
●
Cite Black Authors (no date) A database for academic research by Black authors.Available
at:https://citeblackauthors.com/
●
Creative Reaction Lab. (2018).Equity-CenteredCommunity Design Field Guide.Available
at:https://www.creativereactionlab.com/our-approach
●
Kwon, D. (2022) ‘The rise of citational justice: How scholars are making references fairer’.Nature,603(7902),
pp. 568–571. Available at:https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-00793-1
●
Mott, C. and Cockayne, D. (2017) ‘Citation matters: Mobilizing the politics of citation toward a practice of
‘conscientious engagement’’,Gender, Place & Culture,24(7), pp. 954–973. Available
at:https://doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2017.1339022

58. Further reading on AI
●
Decolonial AI Manyfesto(2024)Available at:https://manyfesto.ai/
●
Queer in AI. (2024). Queer in AI. Available at:https://www.queerinai.com
●
Haman, M. and Školník, M. (2023) ‘Using ChatGPT to conduct a literature
review’,Accountability in Research,pp. 1–3. Available
at:https://doi.org/10.1080/08989621.2023.2185514

59. Slide template available at: slidescarnival.com