Title: (In)Citing Action to Realize an Equitable Future

Abstract:

In recent years, science has been pushed to grapple with the social and structural systems that produce vast gender and racial imbalances in academic participation. While current discussions largely focus on the role of people in positions of power (e.g., journal editors, grant reviewers and agencies, department chairs, and society presidents), many imbalances are in fact caused and perpetuated by researchers themselves. A key example is imbalance within citation practices, where people from marginalized groups are broadly undercited, precluding an unbiased trajectory in the search for scientific truth. Because of the downstream effects that citations can have on visibility and career advancement, understanding and eliminating bias in citation practices is vital for addressing inequity in our scientific community. Here we uncover evidence of striking (and growing) gender and racial imbalances in neuroscience reference lists, and evaluate several candidate drivers of those imbalances. We also offer practical (and open-access) tools for the mitigation of disparity, thereby placing the power for social justice within the hands of individual researchers.

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