52 Ethical Citation Practices

It is certainly important to know how to cite sources effectively, and we have lots of style options to help us do that effectively, including APA, Chicago, MLA, Turabian, etc. However, it is equally important to think through who we cite and what story we tell with our citations. In this vein, the “Worknets” approach to researching secondary sources encourages writers to spend time with an individual source, taking note of keywords in the text, who the author is and who their professional network includes, what else was going on in the world when the text was published, and for the purposes of this conversation, what is one of the sources on which the text relies most heavily. Spending time understanding sources in these four ways helps us conceive of texts as artifacts reflective of their time, place, and connection to other people – both the person(s) who wrote the piece and the people who influenced the author(s). Such recognition might help us choose sources written by a different range of people than we might were we not paying attention to this larger story of what citation signals. For instance, if I’m writing a paper about weather patterns in Asia, it will be important to cite at least some sources by authors in Asia. Instead, if all of my sources are written by people in North America, which might be likely if I’m searching sources with which I’m most familiar, I might miss out on some important understandings of people in the place I’m better trying to understand. Similarly, If I’m writing an article about European football clubs, it will be important to cite European authors familiar with the sport and not rely solely on local (to me) sports experts – the terms and traditions vary across borders, sports, and roles associated with the sport.

Next time you conduct research, consider who you’re citing in addition to what you’re citing, and think about why/not you might seek a diverse set of perspectives on that topic. To learn more about why and how to cite a diverse group of authors, check out the following resources:

Bibliography of BIPOC Scholars in TPC

Itchuaqiyaq, Cana Uluak, and Jordan Frith. “Citational Practices as a Site of Resistance and Radical Pedagogy: Positioning the Multiply Marginalized and Under-represented (MMU) Scholar Database as an Infrastructural Intervention.” Communication Design Quarterly, 10, no. 3, 2022, pp. 10–19, cdq.sigdoc.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/CDQ_Special-Issue-10-3updated-accessibility.pdf.

Jones, Natasha N. “Citation Practices: Shifting Paradigms.” Open Words: Access and English Studies, 13, no. 1, 2021, pp. 142–52, wac.colostate.edu/docs/openwords/v13n1/jones.pdf

Sano-Franchini, Jennifer, Sheila Carter-Tod, Leigh Gruwell, Rachel Ihara, Alexandra Hidalgo, and Lori Ostergaard. “Position Statement on Citation Justice in Rhetoric, Composition, and Writing Studies.” CCCC, November 2022. https://cccc.ncte.org/cccc/citation-justice.