Citation Diversity Statements

Since taking office in January of this year, the Trump administration has taken actions to limit — if not outright dismantle — diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts in federally funded science and academia in the US. Grants for research that explicitly study DEI issues (such as inequality) or that include a DEI component (such as an explicit aim to test diverse cohorts) have been paused or cancelled¹, and universities have been threatened with losing federal funding if they ‘promote DEI’². Some scientific agencies and university administrators are complying with the Trump administration by, for example, asking grant applicants to remove DEI aspects from their proposals or eliminating DEI-relevant funding initiatives¹, effectively eliminating institutional support for DEI.

However, scientists can demonstrate their commitment to DEI through actions that are not mandated by institutions or subject to institutional control. For example, in a Comment in this issue, Carolyn Quam and Teresa Roberts describe how researchers can move scholarship away from narratives that perpetuate societal biases by writing inclusively. Inclusive writing is an iterative, multi-step process that aims to ensure that scientific writing (including review articles, grant applications and literature-review portions of original research reports) does not centre privileged identities as optimal and normative. Quam and Roberts provide an example of an inclusive writing process for a paper they wrote about language development, illustrating that inclusive writing need not be limited to research that is explicitly about marginalized groups or diversity. Importantly, although inclusive writing is an individual act, it can inform systemic change by influencing scientific norms.

At Nature Reviews Psychology, we are now explicitly encouraging authors to take up one of the steps involved in inclusive writing discussed by Quam and Roberts: diversifying citation practices.

The number of citations a paper receives does not necessarily reflect the quality of its research³. However, citations can influence a researcher’s career through speaking invitations, grants, awards and promotions. Thus, representation in reference lists has important consequences for representation in science: if citations are systematically biased against, for example, female authors⁴, then female authors will have CVs or grant applications that are less competitive than those of their male counterparts. Moreover, a systematic citation bias against women means that the field is not properly benefiting from their scientific contributions.

To address such citation biases, we are encouraging authors to explore relevant studies from a diverse group of researchers (including but not limited to diversity in gender, race, career stage and geographical location) before writing their first draft. We are further encouraging them to include a citation diversity statement in the article to acknowledge these efforts (see here for an example from one of our sister journals) and to make others aware of citation imbalances.

The aim of asking authors to consider citation diversity is not to require a specific level of representation for different groups in the reference list. Rather, we hope that our request serves as a nudge for authors to slow down and take the time to survey the field prior to writing, rather than relying on the same articles (and by extension, authors) that they have historically cited and therefore ‘come to mind’ first. Of course, some forms of diversity are more easily assessed than others — identifying an author’s institution and country of employment (markers of geographical representation) are more straightforward than identifying an author’s gender or ethnic identity. However, we hope that encouraging authors to think about citation diversity will prompt them to engage in concerted and sustained efforts to educate themselves about the relevant work of underrepresented scholars.

Part of the stated mission of Nature Reviews Psychology is to represent the diversity of psychological science and all those who consider themselves psychological scientists⁵. We act with this mission in mind when we consider who we invite to write and review for us. We are now asking authors to participate in our mission by actively thinking about who they are citing, which will ultimately improve the diversity and quality of the science we publish. Indeed, ensuring that the references cited and discussed account for the full scope of relevant research is essential for producing an accurate and balanced Review article that truly reflects the current state of a field.