Citation justice is the practice of critically evaluating your own citation practices and identifying where you may be able to find and uplift work by those whose voices are not reflected proportionately in the scholarly record. This practice, which you also may see called inclusive citation or citational justice, asks authors to consider how they can be more intentional about deeply exploring information about a given topic to include sources from those who have historically been disadvantaged or margiinalized by those in power.
Citiation justice does not mean tokenizing your citations. Including a source by a BIPOC or LGBTQIA+ author in your citation list but not actively engaging with their work in a meaningful way is not the goal of citation justice. Rather it encourages you to consider the ways that the systems of research, publishing, and searching for information may be biased towards prioritizing sources by those whose identity reflects the power structures that have been in place for generations. Expertise exists outside of these systems. From How to Cite Like a Badass Tech Feminist Scholar of Color by Rigoberto Lara Guzmán and Sareeta Amrute:
"Recognize that women of color, Dalit and Bahujan writers, Queer thinkers of color, disabled/crip scholars, non-U.S. based scholars, LGBTQIA+ thinkers hold expertise precisely because of the way they have been historically positioned at the intersection of many different kinds of power relations."
Practicing citation justice means pushing back against those power structures by intentionally seeking out a diversity of sources that better reflect society as a whole.
You can practice citation justice in your work! Even small steps can help shift the conversation.
Some ways to take action:
See the other pages in this section for more ideas and resources to put citation justice into practice.