Gendered citation practices in the field of communication

ABSTRACT

In disciplines outside of communication, papers with women as first and last (i.e. senior) authors attract fewer citations than papers with men in those positions. Using data from 14 communication journals from 1995 to 2018, we find that reference lists include more papers with men as first and last author, and fewer papers with women as first and last author, than would be expected if gender were unrelated to referencing. This imbalance is driven largely by the citation practices of men and is slowly decreasing over time. The structure of men’s co-authorship networks partly accounts for the observed over-citation of men by other men. We discuss ways researchers might approach gendered citations in their work.

KEYWORDS:

• Citations
• gender
• communication
• inequality
• publication

Acknowledgements

D.M.L. acknowledges support from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (K01 DA047417). D.S.B. acknowledges support from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and an NSF CAREER award (PHY-1554488). E.B.F, D.S.B & D.M.L acknowledge support from the Army Research Office (Grant Number W911NF-18-1-0244). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of any of the funding agencies.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

D.M.L. acknowledges support from the National Institute on Drug Abuse [grant number K01 DA047417]. D.S.B. acknowledges support from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and an NSF CAREER award [grant number PHY-1554488]. E.B.F, D.S.B & D.M.L acknowledge support from the Army Research Office [grant number W911NF-18-1-0244].