This project report provides an overview of a citation justice project developed at the University of Victoria Libraries, a Canadian academic library, as part of a broader library initiative aiming to address inherent biases within traditional scholarly publishing and academic research practices. Leveraging the unique position of libraries and information specialists as partners in the research process, this report details the steps undertaken, lessons learned, and future plans for advancing critical citation and inclusivity in academic scholarship.
There is a growing movement committed to the values of equitable and just citation, but the material practices of altering citational politics are more challenging. For instance, researchers in the Global South are under-cited, but how many citations are enough to correct this bias? How do we best determine when an author is from the Global South to begin with? We present a case study where social and natural science researchers (the authors) spent years engaged in the material practices of citational politics at the Civic Laboratory for Environmental Action Research (CLEAR). Our findings show that there were notable changes at the individual and collective levels as participants tried to change the status quo, and we use Gloria Anzaldúa’s pathway to conocimiento as an organizing framework for explaining the process of unlearning and learning that occurs through engaging with citational politics. The pathway moves through seven non-linear stages on the way to conocimiento: (1) arrebato/the rupture, when the reality of citational politics is fully understood; (2) liminal space, characterized by more questions than answers; (3) a retreat to pre-rupture/arrebato politics in the face of difficult ideas (backsliding); (4) the crossing, a step in ethical learning that moves the learner from thinking to action; (5) creating new stories where new individual and collective norms emerge; (6) the clash, a stage where these new norms clash against the status quo again; (7) and finally chores, the mundane, regular practices that maintain an amended status quo. Our analysis of the process is designed to both support citational politics practices in particular and provide a framework with examples of how to facilitate and anticipate changes in engaged, collective social change work in general.
This piece unfolds as a multi-voiced dialogue among members of a co-lab who work as scholars, artists, dancers, professors, and storytellers and span diverse disciplinary homes including sustainability, art, science and technology studies, and life sciences. We position citation as a practice of community accountability, aesthetic expression, resistance to erasure, and care for knowledge lineages. We ask: Who are we accountable to when we cite? What does it mean to be in right relationship with our sources? How do citations enact care, reciprocity, and community? In our discussion of disciplinary and epistemological borders, we challenge academic conventions around what counts as knowledge and who counts as a knower, especially highlighting the need to cite Indigenous scholars not only when writing about Indigenous knowledge, but in honoring contemporary, place-based intellectual contributions. In our discussion on canon, we interrogate academic genealogies, metrics of influence, and the mechanisms by which expertise is legitimized. We propose alternate genealogies—such as "mother texts" and "grandmother texts"—and dream of visualizing non-traditional citation trees that encompass lived experience, artistic practice, and kinship with mentors, collaborators, and co-thinkers. Ultimately, this dialogue invites an expansive view of citation as world-building. Critically, this piece uses Chicago-style footnotes to engage with citational politics in dialogue and form: One of the co-authors engages with the dialogue post-hoc through the footnotes, and we use the footnotes to reveal the writing process and editorial review. Rather than merely naming sources, we reflect on what it means to be in conversation with them—across time, space, and medium. Through this piece, we aim to model a citational practice rooted in relational ethics, joy, complexity, and critique.
This teaching reflection shares experiences of teaching citational politics in the context of a PhD course titled Writing as Thinking: Experimenting and Working with Writing as Knowledge Practice. It describes course content, and in particular the kinds of discussions that arose when students and teachers engaged with ideas of citational justice. Based on these experiences, I make two suggestions: first, that we should not consider citation practices (and their politics) in isolation, but rather as one aspect of the intertwined set of practices that comprise scholarly writing more widely; and second, that if we care about citational politics we should also seek to diversify the nature of what is accepted as "academic writing."
Being provided with the source of a scholarly product (book, data, document, etc.) used in a published work is an important aspect of communication in the scholarly world because it allows the author’s peers to verify the results presented therein. Until recently, inconsistency, idiosyncratic practices, and a lack of explicit standards have been the dominant characteristics of the history of supplying bibliographic information for a publication mentioned. This essay uses Robert K. Merton’s (1910–2003) well-known paper “Science and the Social Order” (1938) as a case study to illustrate how “deficient” bibliographic referencing hampers the research process. The long-standing absence of norms regulating source referencing information was gradually reversed during the twentieth century, when sets of formalized and standardized rules were put into place and codified as the new millennium approached–especially with the advent of digital technology. This article examines the variegated ways in which bibliographic material was provided (or not) and suggests how a convergence of factors put an end to this “disorderly” bibliographic sourcing environment.
This multimedia exchange explores the politics of citation beyond traditional academic formats, engaging with issues of citational justice through text, drawings, collages, maps, and knitted data visualisations. Through an email correspondence, we reflect on the tensions between quantification and the lived, relational nature of scholarly influence. While citation counts and diversity metrics can reveal biases, they also risk abstracting knowledge into numbers. This article asks what it means to do justice to the people, ideas, and experiences that shape academic work. Turning to alternative metaphors—carrying and mapping—we reconsider citation as an embodied and material practice. Carrying evokes the ways knowledge is gathered, held, and moved with over time, while mapping traces connections, highlights omissions, and navigates shifting terrains of influence. These approaches make space for sources that may not fit conventional reference lists: fleeting conversations, students’ insights, artistic works, or moments of observation. Through text, image, and craft, we explore a citational practice that embraces complexity and multiplicity. Ultimately, we propose an expanded citational practice that acknowledges a wider range of influences and explores how other formats might better accommodate these forms of knowledge. The exchange results in a “reference map” in which we experiment with an alternative strategy for citation.
What does it mean to cite generative AI (GenAI) tools—both in an instrumental, information retrieval sense, and in a symbolic sense that has more to do with recognition? What does it mean that GenAI tools are also able to produce plausible-looking yet false citations? This theoretical article critically explores the possibility of citational justice in the GenAI era through an analysis of two sets of examples: (1) the existing citation guidance to GenAI output as articulated by the major style guides, and (2) the issue of “hallucinated” (or fabricated) citations produced by GenAI large language model (LLM) chatbots like ChatGPT. Using ideas from Robert K. Merton, Eugene Garfield, Emily M. Bender, Robert J. Connors, and Sam Popowich, I argue that GenAI, across both sets of examples, is antithetical to citational justice. In the first set of examples, I make the case that the human authors and their works, the real source of GenAI tools’ textual output, have been “obliterated”—a term that I borrow from Merton—as part of LLM training. This renders the official style guides’ recommendations for how to cite GenAI tools—particularly APA’s guidance—deeply inadequate. In the second set of examples, I see the fabricated citations produced by GenAI as antithetical to citational justice because they decentre the human. Crucially, though, these fabricated citations are actually perfectly suited to the irrelational context of contemporary higher education transformed by neoliberalism, where commodified student outputs are made to stand as evidence of students’ internal transformation. As a closing gesture, I contend that the issues brought to the fore by GenAI and citation could present a pedagogical opportunity to radically reconceive of library instruction, focusing it on the importance of attribution and relationality in academic work if we so chose, and I offer some questions to guide that reimagined pedagogy.
This article examines the development of the Indigenous Referencing Guidance for Indigenous Knowledges within the broader context of decolonial practice in library and information studies. Academic citation practices have historically privileged Western knowledge frameworks while rendering Indigenous Knowledge systems invisible or subordinate. The Indigenous Referencing Guidance represents an intervention that seeks to address this imbalance by guiding ethical and accurate attribution of Indigenous Knowledge sources. Developed through a partnership between the Indigenous Archives Collective and CAVAL, the Indigenous Referencing Guidance for Indigenous Knowledges project created an Indigenous Knowledge Attribution Toolkit (IKAT) that includes two key components: a decision tree providing guidance for content assessment and attribution and a comprehensive citation and referencing guide featuring examples of Indigenous attribution methods. The guidance specifically addresses academic libraries working with Indigenous information sources at the undergraduate level by acknowledging the critical need to redress power imbalances in citation processes, ensure accurate attribution, and increase the representation of Indigenous knowledges in source materials. This paper outlines the principles underlying the development of the guide, describes the importance of using Indigenous research methodologies to guide ethical Indigenous research practices, and addresses the politics of citation. It explores the opportunities to elevate Indigenous Knowledges through citational practices by sharing examples of practical applications and use of sources described in the IKAT. By considering citations in the context of them being respectful and relational practices, the guide elevates the recognition of Indigenous Knowledges. In doing this, the IKAT specifically contributes to broader movements for Indigenous Data Sovereignty, supports the implementation of Right of Reply protocols, and advances Indigenous priorities in library and academic citation practices. The article concludes by discussing the opportunities connected with implementing the IKAT and suggests future directions for evolving citation practices that honour Indigenous Knowledges.
This introduction provides an overview of the thirteen articles which constitute this special issue about “citational politics and justice.” The issue begins with a discussion paper, followed by six research articles, one commentary, one project report, one teaching reflection, and finishes with three conversations. Authors reflect on the history and future of citation practices, and what they mean for the recognition of marginalised scholars, knowledges, and forms of output. The range of contributions offers insights into how more just scholarly practices can be promoted in teaching, research, publishing, and collaboration with academic and societal partners. Together, these articles provide ideas for achieving greater citational justice, and ultimately improving the quality of knowledge.
The main sources of citation injustice are the collective biases in the scientific community, including literature retrieval bias, which has direct effects on citation inequality. In this commentary I focus on index bias in literature databases, inherent/unconscious bias during search strategy development, and systematic bias of controlled vocabularies. Exemplar literature search strategies and/or retrieval analyses comparing Web of Science and OpenAlex are used to demonstrate these biases. Moreover, this commentary offers steps to consider during literature search preparation, search query building, and the search itself, which can lead to a more inclusive representation of the literature in the topic of interest and reduce citation inequity.
This article explores the non-distributive conception of justice found in the work of feminist political philosopher Iris Marion Young (1949–2006), particularly in her landmark volume Justice and the Politics of Difference (1990). As laid out in that work, Young’s “five faces of oppression”—exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and violence—are central to the issues posed by citational justice scholarship and open up new ways of understanding how citational injustice is unjust. By connecting Young’s work with questions of citational justice, this article seeks to develop a nuanced conception of injustice as oppression, and thus as a matter of radical progressive politics, rather than merely a question of the (re)distribution of goods, which is too easily coopted to the capitalist logics of the corporatized university. The article concludes with some thoughts around reading and generative AI in academic work.
Given the recent growing emphasis on citation justice and related concepts, this paper examines "Citation Analysis," published in Library Trends in 1981, and revisits it through the lens of citation justice. Overarching questions include: How can citation analysis be more just? How can research evaluation go beyond citation analysis to be more just? Sections include a discussion of the concept of citation justice, applications of citation analysis with particular emphasis on evaluative bibliometrics, characterization of assumptions underlying citation analysis, identification of problems posed in dealing with citation data, and an outline of possible approaches to achieving citation justice. Several different entities and actions are discussed with the goal of working toward citation justice. These include author roles, pedagogical approaches, resource compilation, editor and reviewer roles, publisher roles, advocacy, recommendations for research evaluation reform, and higher education institutional roles. Viewing citation analysis through the lens of citation justice reveals significant limitations in citation analysis and suggests ways to correct them–both to ensure that more diverse scholars are part of the scholarly conversation that underlies citation analysis and to encourage approaches to research evaluation that are not dependent solely on citation counts.
The main sources of citation injustice are the collective biases in the scientific community, including literature retrieval bias, which has direct effects on citation inequality. In this commentary I focus on index bias in literature databases, inherent/unconscious bias during search strategy development, and systematic bias of controlled vocabularies. Exemplar literature search strategies and/or retrieval analyses comparing Web of Science and OpenAlex are used to demonstrate these biases. Moreover, this commentary offers steps to consider during literature search preparation, search query building, and the search itself, which can lead to a more inclusive representation of the literature in the topic of interest and reduce citation inequity.
This paper examines the evolution of academic citation practices from print into digital contexts. While standardised citation styles only became widespread in the mid-twentieth century, the digital era has raised new questions about credibility, authority, and the recognition of diverse sources. Contemporary shifts—including the rise of alternative scholarly outputs, decolonisation movements, and artificial intelligence—have highlighted various forms of citational injustice and misbehaviours, prompting corrective interventions. While these approaches represent progress, they often remain narrowly focused and lack a broader theoretical orientation capable of driving multi-level systemic change in the context of developing technologies such as artificial intelligence, which are being used by some scholars as research tools. This paper serves as a foundation for developing a new citational justice framework in future research. Working towards improved citational justice is not only about recognising, acknowledging, and combating citational and epistemic injustice but also about rethinking the academic culture of research communications in digital citation contexts. Collective action and sustained structural transformation are needed to reshape digital citation practices towards more equitable and transparent paradigms of knowledge production in the rapidly changing digital publishing landscape.
This piece unfolds as a multi-voiced dialogue among members of a co-lab who work as scholars, artists, dancers, professors, and storytellers and span diverse disciplinary homes including sustainability, art, science and technology studies, and life sciences. We position citation as a practice of community accountability, aesthetic expression, resistance to erasure, and care for knowledge lineages. We ask: Who are we accountable to when we cite? What does it mean to be in right relationship with our sources? How do citations enact care, reciprocity, and community? In our discussion of disciplinary and epistemological borders, we challenge academic conventions around what counts as knowledge and who counts as a knower, especially highlighting the need to cite Indigenous scholars not only when writing about Indigenous knowledge, but in honoring contemporary, place-based intellectual contributions. In our discussion on canon, we interrogate academic genealogies, metrics of influence, and the mechanisms by which expertise is legitimized. We propose alternate genealogies—such as "mother texts" and "grandmother texts"—and dream of visualizing non-traditional citation trees that encompass lived experience, artistic practice, and kinship with mentors, collaborators, and co-thinkers. Ultimately, this dialogue invites an expansive view of citation as world-building. Critically, this piece uses Chicago-style footnotes to engage with citational politics in dialogue and form: One of the co-authors engages with the dialogue post-hoc through the footnotes, and we use the footnotes to reveal the writing process and editorial review. Rather than merely naming sources, we reflect on what it means to be in conversation with them—across time, space, and medium. Through this piece, we aim to model a citational practice rooted in relational ethics, joy, complexity, and critique.
What does it mean to cite generative AI (GenAI) tools—both in an instrumental, information retrieval sense, and in a symbolic sense that has more to do with recognition? What does it mean that GenAI tools are also able to produce plausible-looking yet false citations? This theoretical article critically explores the possibility of citational justice in the GenAI era through an analysis of two sets of examples: (1) the existing citation guidance to GenAI output as articulated by the major style guides, and (2) the issue of “hallucinated” (or fabricated) citations produced by GenAI large language model (LLM) chatbots like ChatGPT. Using ideas from Robert K. Merton, Eugene Garfield, Emily M. Bender, Robert J. Connors, and Sam Popowich, I argue that GenAI, across both sets of examples, is antithetical to citational justice. In the first set of examples, I make the case that the human authors and their works, the real source of GenAI tools’ textual output, have been “obliterated”—a term that I borrow from Merton—as part of LLM training. This renders the official style guides’ recommendations for how to cite GenAI tools—particularly APA’s guidance—deeply inadequate. In the second set of examples, I see the fabricated citations produced by GenAI as antithetical to citational justice because they decentre the human. Crucially, though, these fabricated citations are actually perfectly suited to the irrelational context of contemporary higher education transformed by neoliberalism, where commodified student outputs are made to stand as evidence of students’ internal transformation. As a closing gesture, I contend that the issues brought to the fore by GenAI and citation could present a pedagogical opportunity to radically reconceive of library instruction, focusing it on the importance of attribution and relationality in academic work if we so chose, and I offer some questions to guide that reimagined pedagogy.
Video games set in or inspired by early modern or medieval Europe have historically featured almost entirely white casts of characters, a decision often defended on the grounds of historical accuracy. This video essay examines how the myth of an all-white European past emerged and how it has shaped both video game design and gaming culture more broadly. It then explores how diversity is represented in the For Honor and Chivalry series as case studies of the "historical accuracy" framing in video games. Ultimately, the essay argues that including a diverse cast of characters is not only appropriate but necessary for achieving true historical accuracy.
This article explores the non-distributive conception of justice found in the work of feminist political philosopher Iris Marion Young (1949–2006), particularly in her landmark volume Justice and the Politics of Difference (1990). As laid out in that work, Young’s “five faces of oppression”—exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and violence—are central to the issues posed by citational justice scholarship and open up new ways of understanding how citational injustice is unjust. By connecting Young’s work with questions of citational justice, this article seeks to develop a nuanced conception of injustice as oppression, and thus as a matter of radical progressive politics, rather than merely a question of the (re)distribution of goods, which is too easily co-opted to the capitalist logics of the corporatized university. The article concludes with some thoughts around reading and generative AI in academic work.
Through analysis of data from interviews with people who shared their stories with two community archives, Texas After Violence Project (TAVP) and South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA), this article examines how records creators imagine future use and users. Our findings reveal that people create records with concrete ideas of who might access their record and how they might use it. In keeping with community archives research that troubles the sharp delineation between record creator and user, we find that community archives creators are motivated by the need for representational belonging, radical empathy for their communities, and reciprocal archival imaginaries. Many of the participants in our research also describe their story's potential use as a tool for activism and advocacy. Sharing their stories with these uses in mind, participants in our research engaged in what we call prefigurative record creation, a term we use to describe how participants enacted the future they imagine for their communities by sharing their story in the present. Prefigurative record creation constitutes a political act in opposition to the misrepresentation, erasure, and violence that marginalized communities encounter in society. Recognition of prefigurative records creation as such is crucial to helping community archives understand and meet the expectations of their donors.
This teaching reflection shares experiences of teaching citational politics in the context of a PhD course titled Writing as Thinking: Experimenting and Working with Writing as Knowledge Practice. It describes course content, and in particular the kinds of discussions that arose when students and teachers engaged with ideas of citational justice. Based on these experiences, I make two suggestions: first, that we should not consider citation practices (and their politics) in isolation, but rather as one aspect of the intertwined set of practices that comprise scholarly writing more widely; and second, that if we care about citational politics we should also seek to diversify the nature of what is accepted as "academic writing."
