Earth & Environmental Sciences

Citation is widely used as a metric for evaluating performance in Western academia. Like other cultural practices, citation is susceptible to biases that reflect and reinforce dominant historical power structures of race, gender, and class.

Citation justice is the practice of maintaining an awareness of these biases and actively working to build more inclusive and equitable citation networks within your works. By choosing to cite scholars with varied backgrounds and identities, you intentionally expand the academic conversation, and increase equity and inclusion in your fields.

Some suggestions for inclusive citation practice include:

• Experiment with search terms and sources, and broaden your reading: reading from a range of cultures, races, and other identities can help diversify citations. 
• Audit your citation list. Does it include racialized, female-identified, early-career, or non-academic authors?
• Include a citation diversity statement to increase the transparency of your practice and encourage other scholars to do likewise.

Interested in learning more about citation justice?

• University of Minnesota's guide to conducting anti-racist research (see the section "Decenter whiteness in primary research")
• Michigan State University's guide to AI and citation equality
• Kwon, D. (2022). The rise of citational justice: how scholars are making references fairer. Nature (London), 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 and Culture : A Journal of Feminist Geography, 24(7), 954–973. https://doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2017.1339022