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Social Work

Social Work Library Guide

Why do we cite?

Why We Cite: Whose voices are we uplifting?

Understanding why we cite and the politics of citation is important, perhaps more important than knowing how to cite in a specific style. The feminist theorist Sara Ahmed describes citation as memory. In her book, Living a Feminist Life, she writes about her choice not to cite any white men. Citation matters because we are making a decision about whose voices we are uplifting.

My citation policy has given me more room to attend to those feminists who came before me. Citation is feminist memory. Citation is how we acknowledge our debt to those who came before; those who helped us find our way when the way was obscured because we deviated from the paths we were told to follow. In this book, I cite feminists of color who have contributed to the project of naming and dismantling institutions of patriarchal whiteness.

-Sara Ahmed Living a Feminist Life

In many fields, from economics to geography to communications, the voices of white men are cited far more than any others. Annabel L. Kim writes about citation itself as an object of inquiry, building on the work of Sara Ahmed and the #citeblackwomen movement:

...they articulate the way citation most often violently erases the contributions of minoritized scholars such as women and people of color, thus abetting the continued consolidation of intellectual influence in a white, heteronormative, masculine center.

-(Kim, 2020)

Some databases, such as Google Scholar, Scopus, and Web of Science, indicate how many times a work has been cited. In Web of Science and Scopus you can even sort by highest citations. Often highly cited papers are foundational to particular theories or areas of research, but it's important to interrogate this. If a work is not cited highly, it doesn't necessarily mean that work isn't a significant contribution to the field.


Questions to consider

  • Who are we citing, and why?
  • Should we only cite peer-reviewed articles?
  • Is there benefit in citing non-peer-reviewed sources?
  • How does the peer-review process and measure of impact factor of journals perpetuate or dismantle systems of oppression?
  • How are social workers creating and sharing best practice knowledge outside the academy?


Further reading:

Ahmed, S. 2017. Living a feminist life. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Chakravartty, P., Kuo, R., Grubbs, V., & McIlwain, C. (2018). #CommunicationSoWhite. Journal of Communication, 68(2), 254–266. https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqy003

D'Ignazio, C. & Klein, L. F. (2020). Data feminism. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Kim, A. L. (2020). The politics of citation. Diacritics, 48(3), 4–9. https://doi.org/10.1353/dia.2020.0016

McKittrick, K. (2021). Footnotes: Books and papers scattered about the floor. In Dear Science and other stories. (pp. 14-34). Duke University Press.

Mott, C., & Cockayne, D. (2017). Citation matters: Mobilizing the politics of citation toward a practice of ‘conscientious engagement.’ Gender, Place & Culture, 24(7), 954–973. https://doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2017.1339022

Citing AI

What to know about Citing AI

Because AI tools are evolving, existing citation style guidance varies significantly for citing AI-generated content. If there is no official guidance appropriate for your use, include enough information to adhere to citation principles. In addition to style guides for citation, you may need to consult individual publisher policies for using AI tools or including AI-generated content in writing.

When and what to cite

If AI is used in the creation of an academic paper in any way, it should be cited in the text and references and/or in the acknowledgements.

Cite when an AI tool was used to: 

  • Gather information
  • Write text
  • Edit Text
  • Synthesize ideas or find connections
  • Clean/manipulate data

Many citation management tools are not yet formatted to include AI as an item type. As such, collect the following information for your manual citation input: 

  • Tool name and version (e.g., ChatGPT 3.5)
  • Time and date of usage
  • Prompt or query
  • Response
  • Follow up queries and responses
  • Name of person who queried

Sources

The Citing AI tools guide where this information is from was inspired by MIT's generative AI citation guide. Other resources used:

 McAdoo, Timothy. “How to Cite ChatGPT.” APA Style Blog (blog), February 23, 2024. https://apastyle.apa.org/blog/how-to-cite-chatgpt.

MLA Style Center. “How Do I Cite Generative AI in MLA Style?,” March 17, 2023. https://style.mla.org/citing-generative-ai/.

The Chicago Manual of Style Online. “The Chicago Manual of Style, 18th Edition.” Accessed October 29, 2024. https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/book/ed18/part3/ch14/psec112.html.

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