Citing Sources

Why should you properly cite your research?

• Point out the conversation you are having with other scholars and their ideas.
• Enhance the credibility of your own argument with supporting evidence.
• Provide your reader with additional sources for further reading.
• Give credit where credit is due.
• To avoid plagiarism, a serious academic violation.

Citation politics is about reproducing sameness. Academia has a long history with intellectual gatekeeping. Institutions of higher education in the United States still employ a predominantly white male faculty population resulting in white male dominated research production favoring Anglo-centric systems of knowledge.

Women are cited less on average than research authored by men. If a women co-authors with a man, the paper has a higher chance of being cited. 

People of the Global Majority (i.e. Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) are less cited than their white colleagues even if they have more experience than white researchers.

Well-cited scholars gain authority because they are well-cited. However, well-cited does not equate to quality especially at the expense of those less-cited.

Practice citation counting: literally count how many women and people of the global majority are included in your references. Also: how many scholars working outside the United States do you cite? How many scholars working in languages other than English? 

Cite research produced in Latin America and the Caribbean, and in languages other than English, when you are writing about those regions.   

There are different kinds of authority. Consider the context in which you are writing and determine: what kind of expert do you need? For example, when might a government site not be as reliable as a personal narrative?

Push against the narrow definition of academic scholarship that is exclusive, misogynistic and racist. Just because someone's work has not been heavily cited does not mean it does not have value. Strive towards citation politics that are feminist and anti-racist.

There are more contributors to research than just the author(s). Take a critical look at the methodology section to see who contributed and who didn't. 

Who you cite matters! We have a responsibility to thoroughly evaluate our sources.

• Gender Balance Assessment Tool (GBAT)

  "Women are cited less often than men, and are also underrepresented in syllabi. Yet even well-meaning scholars may find that they have difficulty assessing how gender-balanced their bibliographies and syllabi really are. Counting is tedious and prone to human error, and scholars may not know the gender identities of all the authors they cite. This tool aims to help with that, by automating the process of evaluating the (probabilistic) gender of each name and then providing an estimate of what percentage of the authors on a syllabus are women."

• Cite Black Women.

  A movement that engages with social media and aesthetic representation in order to push people to critically rethink the politics of knowledge production by engaging in a radical praxis of citation that acknowledges and honors Black women’s transnational intellectual production.