Citation Justice

Type of citation injustice

A better way might be….

Cite-Me Cite:

Occurs when editors pressure authors to cite articles from the journal, publisher, or even themselves.

Note: This may also be an indicator of a predatory journal. Carefully investigate the legitimacy of the publication. 

Find another article or journal – this is not considered an ethical practice.

Name-Agnostic Cite:

Common when names are unfamiliar or difficult to pronounce. It might look something like “Other authors [x] have studied…”

Use their names explicitly within the text when citing their work. If you are engaged with their work, then likely you have become comfortable with it.

“G. S. Ramlackhansingh (1966) studied….”

In-the-Global-South and Unrelated-to-the-North Cite:

Two similar exploits, these types of citation can be seen as alienation and testimonial injustice.

“This area has been studied in the Global South [x]…” 
or 

“…studied extensively in the Global South but not relevant to our study [x]…” 

“This area has been studied in the Global South [x]…” 
or 

“…studied extensively in the Global South but not relevant to our study [x]…” 

Citations such as these can reinforce a lack of visibility of works produced in the Global South, and perpetuate engagement with only Western-centric scholarship. 

Comments about research that you have not engaged with may suggest that while a search returned the result, you did not spend time to understand its contribution.

If the work is relevant and you have engaged with it such that is shapes the outcome of your study, then it is worthy of citing the work.

Throwaway Cite:

These are very common and typically have numerous citations tied to a single concept making it difficult to know what the actual contribution is.

“The field has previously studied rainbows (x, y, z, g, h, i]…”

If it is not important to the outcomes of your study, don’t cite it.

If you are doing a systematic review, then there are other ways of reporting this data.

Separate out which studies are important and communicate what contribution the study is making.

“The study by Rainer, Hoof, and Horn [x] investigated the emotional impact of rainbows on child patients…, which was confirmed by Fetlock & Pastern [y], and Stifle & Chestnut [z]…yet refuted by Mane et al. in three separate studies [g,h,i].”

No Cite:

This is an omission of related work, intentional or unintentional.

“No studies exist that have examined whether unicorns have contributed substantially to escalating stock prices.”

The author is held responsible whether an omission was intentional or unintentional.

When possible, correct the omission, but engage with the work to fully understand what impact it may have on your study.

When omitting works intentionally, its best to spell this out in your methods so that it is accountable and reproducible.

“Our search criteria was performed within a limited number of journals in this field and does not represent an exhaustive search on the topic of unicorns performing unregulated activities as board members within high-growth companies.”