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Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
This resource was adapted by Tammy Ivins from the guide created by Andrea Baer at Rowan University, with the use of content from USU Libraries' MMU Scholarship guide and TU Dublin Library Services' "Building Multi-Stories: A Guide to Inclusive Referencing" resource. Many thanks to those guides' creators for permission to reuse their content.
"Citational justice" (or "Inclusive citation") is an approach to citing the intellectual and creative work of individuals and groups with a diversity of backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives. Inclusive citation works to counteract dominant power structures that have historically privileged certain groups while disadvantaging others.
The tips in this guide will help you find a wider diversity of voices and perspectives when searching for sources on a specific topic. Drawing on that diversity in intentional and purposeful ways can further enrich your own thinking and the larger conversations about the topic with which you're engaged.
Citations and social (in)equity
Power inequities are often reflected in who is and is not included in citations. For example, research shows that men are much more frequently cited in social science scholarship than are women and that Black women are also greatly underrepresented in citation practices in anthropology. (The problem extends far beyond these areas of study and is far more pervasive than just these two studies illustrate.)
Because academic environments mirror many of the inequities that structure society in general, it is unsurprising that citations reflect these systems of privilege and disadvantage, but it is also unacceptable.
The video below further explores how citations often reflect and reinforce larger systems of power and privilege and how inclusive citation practices can foster richer inquiry and scholarship. This video was created by MU, but the lessons apply to NU as well.
