Critical information literacy (CIL) considers the social, economic, and political systems in which information is produced, disseminated, and accessed. Rather than information transfer being a transactional event, where information can be seen as capital that is held by one entity and transferred to another, CIL involves actively engaging with and problematizing the structures in which information is shared.
While information literacy generally involves developing the skills to evaluate information, CIL considers how to evaluate information in structural context. Whose voices are included or excluded from the conversation? Does this differ based on discipline? How much of the structure of knowledge transfer is based on Western, colonial thought and practice? What understanding might be missing based on the information that is considered to be the highest value and/or is most easily available to the knowledge seeker?
In research and scholarly writing, the act of citing another's work is one piece of the information sharing process. Citational practices can reflect the systems that prioritize some voices over others.
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.
Video: Citing Multiply Marginalized and Underrepresented (MMU) Scholars (USU Libraries)
This content is reproduced with gratitude from Rowan University's Inclusive Citation guide developed by Andrea Baer, which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Citation counts (the number of times a work is cited by other works) are a metric that is often seen as a measure of quality, without consideration of the impact of the systems and biases of the scholarly record and academic publishing system. Citation counts and metrics around the impact of specific journals also impact how easily discoverable they are. Publications with a large number of citations may be given greater weight than those with fewer citations by different search tools. A work that has been highly cited is more likely to be discovered by searchers looking for information on that topic, even if the citations to the work are being critical about its conclusions or content.
Authors with a large number of citations may develop name recognition that increases the visibility of future works and thus improves their chances of being cited more frequently. Papers that are frequently cited may also uplift the voice of the author they have cited. Because the systems that support knowledge mobilization, including academia, government, and public and private research institutions have generally been dominated by white, Western, English-speaking people, these are the people who have benefited most from the cyclical and compounding nature of citations.
When academic researchers apply for tenure and promotion, citation counts are an important factor in consideration of their applications. Even with a growing understanding of the problemtatic nature of these metrics as a measure of skill, knowledge, and quality, publishing works that then receive citations from other researchers is still a de facto requirement for success. There are movements towards reducing the weight of these problematic ways of assessing researchers, including the Declaration on Research Assessment, which aims to reduce the use of journal impact factors in evaluating the impact of research outputs, support article-level assessments of different types of engagement, and broaden the scope of modes of research output considered in evaluating researchers.
Being intentional about your citation practices can help to shift the scholarly conversation.
What and who you chose to cite is a reflection of your positionalities.*
You come to research as you and bring with you your experiences, opinions, access to information, specific skill sets, etc.
These positionalities* effect who you include in your research and who you exclude. Who YOU consider an authority on the subject matters.
Citation selecting is not passive. We make a conscious decision who to include and who to exclude in our research.
We need to discuss our intentions and why we chose to cite certain resources over others. It holds us accountable for the research we do and the creations we produce.
Adapted from Salem State University Library "Act Up - Evaluation Method - Citation Politics"