By Khine Thant Su, PhD Student
Citations are crucial in academic work but we often aren’t taught how to cite intentionally, drawing from diverse sources of knowledge while paying attention to biases in research approaches. Citational justice means citing knowledge producers based on their identity in order to uplift marginalized scholars. Based on faculty panelists’ suggestions from our recent workshop on citational justice, here are some tips that can help you become more intentional in your citational practices:
Get exposed to more ideas
Seek diverse knowledge by talking to and learning from a wide range of people across disciplines and geographies. You can complement this with diverse sources of knowledge you have access to online like social media, blogs, newspapers, and videos.
Get clear about your own process of constructing knowledge
If you are an instructor, you influence your students’ perception of the field based on the scholarship included in your syllabi. It is important to communicate to your students the decisions you have made in crafting your syllabus, what is not featured, and why. This reminds students to keep seeking diverse sources of knowledge.
Get research support from the UW–Madison librarians
UW–Madison Libraries’ Subject Librarians build library collections, provide research support to students and scholars, and network with researchers and colleagues on campus and beyond. With this expertise, they can assist you in the area of citational justice. Working with an understanding of how current academic publishing structures and search tools can underrepresent the thoughts and work of marginalized scholars, librarians can assist you in identifying and accessing scholarship from diverse voices.
Tips for Grads is a professional and academic advice column written by graduate students for graduate students at UW–Madison. It is published in the student newsletter, GradConnections Weekly.