Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-g8jcs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T23:59:16.974Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

What Is the Harm in Gendered Citation Practices?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Darcy McCusker
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Women are cited less frequently than men in a variety of scientific fields. Drawing theoretical resources from Fricker and Hookway, I argue that these gendered citation practices constitute a form of participatory epistemic injustice insofar as they prevent female scientists from fully engaging in the epistemic practices of science. Furthermore, Longino’s notion of “uptake” gives us a way of understanding gendered citation practices as an epistemic harm accrued not simply by individuals but by scientific communities as a whole. Finally, I discuss the cumulative harms of this kind of participatory epistemic injustice for individuals and for marginalized groups.

Type
Ethics, Values, and Social Epistemology
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 86 , Issue 5 , December 2019 , pp. 1041 - 1051
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

To contact the author, please write to: Department of Philosophy, 378 Savery Hall, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195; e-mail: [email protected].

References

Abbott, Alison, Cyranoski, David, Jones, Nicola, Maher, Brendan, Schiermeier, Quirin, and Noorden, Richard Van. 2010. “Metrics: Do Metrics Matter?” Nature 465 (7300): 860–62..CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Caplar, Neven, Tacchella, Sandro, and Birrer, Simon. 2017. “Quantitative Evaluation of Gender Bias in Astronomical Publications from Citation Counts.” Nature Astronomy 1 (6): 0141.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Casadevall, Arturo, and Fang, Ferric C.. 2015. “Impacted Science: Impact Is Not Importance.” mBio 6 (5): e01593.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Code, L. 1991. What Can She Know? Feminist Theory and the Construction of Knowledge. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collins, P. H. 1991. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Fricker, Miranda. 2007. Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Geraci, Lisa, Balsis, Steve, and Busch, Alexander J.. 2015. “Gender and the H Index in Psychology.” Scientometrics 105 (3): 2023–34..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gero, Joan. 2000. “The Social World of Prehistoric Facts: Gender and Power in Paleoindian Research.” In Interpretive Archaeology: A Reader, 304–16. London: Leicester University Press.Google Scholar
González-Álvarez, Julio, and Cervera-Crespo, Teresa. 2017. “Research Production in High-Impact Journals of Contemporary Neuroscience: A Gender Analysis.” Journal of Informetrics 11 (1): 232–43..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hill, Emily, Blake, Rachel, Emerson, Jenna, Svider, Peter, Eloy, Jean, Raker, Christina, Robison, Katina, and Stuckey, Ashley. 2015. “Gender Differences in Scholarly Productivity within Academic Gynecologic Oncology Departments.” Obstetrics and Gynecology 126 (6): 1279–84..CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hookway, Christopher. 2010. “Some Varieties of Epistemic Injustice: Reflections on Fricker.” Episteme 7 (2): 151–63..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hutson, Scott R. 2002. “Gendered Citation Practices in American Antiquity and Other Archaeology Journals.” American Antiquity 67 (2): 331–42..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ioannidis, John P. A, and Khoury, Muin J.. 2014. “Assessing Value in Biomedical Research: The PQRST of Appraisal and Reward.” JAMA 312 (5): 483–84..CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kelly, Clint D., and Jennions, Michael D.. 2006. “The H Index and Career Assessment by Numbers.” Trends in Ecology and Evolution 21 (4): 167–70..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Khan, Nickalus R., Thompson, Clinton J., Taylor, Douglas R., Venable, Garrett T., Wham, R. Matthew, Michael, L. Madison, and Klimo, Paul. 2014. “An Analysis of Publication Productivity for 1225 Academic Neurosurgeons and 99 Departments in the United States.” Journal of Neurosurgery 120 (3): 746–55..CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Klimo, Paul, Venable, Garrett T., Khan, Nickalus R., Taylor, Douglas R., Shepherd, Brandon A., Thompson, Clinton J., and Selden, Nathan R.. 2014. “Bibliometric Evaluation of Pediatric Neurosurgery in North America.” Journal of Neurosurgery: Pediatrics 14 (6): 695–703..Google ScholarPubMed
Knobloch-Westerwick, Silvia, and Glynn, Carroll J.. 2013. “The Matilda Effect: Role Congruity Effects on Scholarly Communication.” Communication Research 40 (1): 3–26..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Larivière, Vincent, and Sugimoto, Cassidy R.. 2018. “The Journal Impact Factor: A Brief History, Critique, and Discussion of Adverse Effects.” arXiv.org, Cornell University. https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1801/1801.08992.pdf.Google Scholar
Longino, Helen E. 1990. Science as Social Knowledge: Values and Objectivity in Scientific Inquiry. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Longino, Helen E.. 2002. The Fate of Knowledge. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maliniak, Daniel, Powers, Ryan, and Walter, Barbara F.. 2013. “The Gender Citation Gap in International Relations.” International Organization 67 (4): 889–922..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Martell, Richard F., Lane, David M., and Emrich, Cynthia. 1996. “Male-Female Differences: A Computer Simulation.” American Psychologist 51 (2): 157–58..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nosek, Brian A., et al. 2009. “National Differences in Gender-Science Stereotypes Predict National Sex Differences in Science and Math Achievement.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 106 (26): 10593–97..CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Prentice, Deborah A. 2012. “Liberal Norms and Their Discontents.” Perspectives on Psychological Science 7 (5): 516–18..CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Saul, Jennifer, and Brownstein, Michael, eds. 2016. Implicit Bias and Philosophy. vol. 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Schisterman, Enrique, Swanson, Chandra, Lu, Ya-Ling, and Mumford, Sunni. 2017. “The Changing Face of Epidemiology: Gender Disparities in Citations?” Epidemiology 28 (2): 159–68..CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Seglen, P. O. 1997. “Why the Impact Factor of Journals Should Not Be Used for Evaluating Research.” BMJ 314:497. doi:10.1136/bmj.314.7079.497.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Valian, Virginia. 1999. Why So Slow? The Advancement of Women. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar