As a student, you learn, create, share, and test knowledge. That means you’re gaining knowledge from other sources, and sharing it back, sometimes with your own knowledge or ideas mixed in. Sometimes you’re just showing you know something. Sometimes you’re using that knowledge as a jumping-off point for other ideas. All of these activities require citation, referencing, and attribution. 

For “knowledge occupations” like those that engage professional researchers, policy analysts, scientists, lawyers, designers, journalists, and technical writers (among many others) there are norms and conventions that show how knowledge flows. Intellectual property (products of intellect) belongs to the thinker, but at the same time, all thinking is always done as part of wider conversations and builds on other intellectual property. Citing, referencing and attributing the knowledge we use from others is crucial for these fields, both ethically (respecting intellectual property, both individual and collective) and methodologically (so others can consider sources of knowledge). 

Knowing when and how to cite, reference, and attribute knowledge is not just a technical skill, however. It is also a way we engage in politics (struggles pertaining to power) whether we want to or not. Because “citation is taken as an assumed proxy for measuring impact, relevance, and importance, with implications not only for hiring, promotion, tenure, and other aspects of performance evaluation but also for how certain voices are represented and included over others in intellectual conversations. Careful and conscientious citation is important because the choices we make about whom to cite – and who is then left out of the conversation– directly impact the cultivation of a rich and diverse discipline, and the reproduction of geographical knowledge itself” (Mott and Cockayne, 2017: 2).

For instance, a study by “Foster et al. (2007, 304) suggest that the most cited scholars in economic geography are English-speaking geographers residing in the UK and North America” (Mott and Cockayne 2017: 961) even though Geography is supposed to be an international and global field. Research in similar disciplines like international relations finds that “articles authored by women are cited less on average than those authored by men” and that “this gap disappears as soon as women coauthor with men” (Maliniak, Powers, and Walter, 2013: 4). Another study looked at “all original research and commentary articles from 5 high-impact medical journals (Annals of Internal Medicine, British Medical Journal, JAMA, JAMA Internal Medicine, and The New England Journal of Medicine)” and found that within 5,554 articles, “those written by women primary or senior authors had fewer citations than those written by men primary or senior authors” by half, even after correcting for the gender imbalance in authorship (Chatterjee and Werner 2021: 1). Professors and students are implicated in these trends.

Bibliography

  • Chatterjee, Paula, and Rachel M. Werner. 2021. “Gender Disparity in Citations in High-Impact Journal Articles.” JAMA Network Open 4(7):e2114509–e2114509.
  • Maliniak, Daniel, Ryan Powers, and Barbara F. Walter. “The gender citation gap in international relations.” International Organization 67, no. 4 (2013): 889-922.
  • Mott, Carrie, and Daniel Cockayne. “Citation matters: mobilizing the politics of citation toward a practice of ‘conscientious engagement’.” Gender, Place & Culture 24, no. 7 (2017): 954-973.

For more readings on citation and its politics, see CLEAR lab’s Public Bibliography on Citational Politics.

Assignment

Read Andrea Adinger’s short blog post, Cultivating a Conscientious Citation Practice (2019). Then, complete the questions below. If you need a primer on how to cite things properly, see the short video, “Citing Sources: Why & How to Do It” (OSLIS 2018).

  1. After reading Andrea Edinger’s “Cultivating a Conscientious Citation Practice,” (2019), propose ONE thing that you will do to guide your citations for the rest of this course (or semester, or project, depending on the scale of what you are working on).
  2. Give a REASON that you are choosing this course of action. Why are you doing this? Why is it important? Be sure to use proper citations in your answer. 
  3. Provide EVIDENCE that this course of action is needed. What is your proof that this is true and necessary? You can use the reading, but you can also analyze your own previous research, your course syllabi, and other sources in your life that use citations. Here is a gender assessment tool for determining the likely percentage of women authors in a syllabus or reference list if it is helpful: https://jlsumner.shinyapps.io/syllabustool/
  4. How will you evaluate if your citational intervention from question one is successful by the end of the course? Put another way, what will you concretely be able to measure or otherwise demonstrate that it worked? How will you tell if it didn’t work? Evaluations should be specific, measurable, and time-bound. (e.g. “If my own citations of women and gender minority lead authors increase by at least 20% by the end of this course, I know I have made an effort to change my citation practices as the increase is unlikely to be due to chance”).

Each is worth one point. Note that you can get over 100% for this assignment for exemplary answers. 

Bibliography

Edinger, Andrea. (2019). Cultivating a Conscientious Citation Practice. Unwritten Histories Blog. Accessed August 10, 2022.

OSLIS. (2018). Citing Sources: Why & How to Do It. OSLIS Elementary Videos: YouTube. https://youtu.be/-JV9cLDCgas. Accessed August 8, 2023.

How to cite this module:
Liboiron, Max. (2023). “Citational politics training module,” CLEAR lab. Available at https://civiclaboratory.nl/2023/08/08/citational-politics-training-module/. Accessed on [date].

See more projects from the Citational Politics Working Group at CLEAR here.

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