A Campaign for Better Citation Practices in Philosophy -- an amended proposal

Philosophy has a citation problem. That much, I think, cannot reasonably be denied (see here, here, here, and here). As I explained here and here, citation practices in philosophy are notoriously lax, and there are reasons to believe that they have functioned, and continue to function, to systematically favor:

1. Men over non-men
2. The "famous" over the "non-famous"
3. People at prestigious institutions over those at less-prestigious places
4. Articles in highly-ranked journals over articles in less highly-ranked journals
5. In-groups of philosophers who cite each other but not outsiders

We can, of course, reasonably disagree over how serious these problems are, or even whether they are all problems. Some people may say, for instance, that there is nothing wrong with preferentially citing articles in "good journals" over those in "bad journals" (though I have explained in detail what I think is so wrong with this sort of thing here. I've heard many people say they do not even read articles in "bad journals", despite recognizing that sometimes those journals publish good or even great things, which strikes me as (A) bad scholarship and (B) bad for the discipline, since it means good work may be ignored). But whatever. However we hash out these details, I believe there is clearly an issue with prevailing citation norms and practices.

The question then is: what should we do about it? I put forth a specific proposal here. However, it was met with some pretty stiff resistance. Accordingly, although I do not entirely accept the dissenting arguments, I think it would be best if we moved forward with a proposal that more people would be apt to accept (I do not want to insist that I am right about how citations should function, though I think I am;). So, what should we do? Here is the first thing I want to say: saying things like, "We need to do a better job", isn't good enough. Few things in this world happen as a result of "resolving to do a better job." People ordinarily need incentives to do a better job, and these incentives usually need to take the form of people promoting and/or enforcing different norms and expectations. I believe this is the case here. If we want to improve citation practices in philosophy, we need to stand up and make a point of it. But how? I want to propose, once again, that we begin a Campaign for Better Citation Practices in Philosophy. But now, given that we disagree on what exactly citation standards should be (see above), how could such a campaign work? Well, here is an alternative proposal: I could solicit reader submissions each month where readers, on a case-by-case basis, get to "make the case" that either (1) a given paper is "worth citing" but has not been cited appropriately in the recent literature on its topic (whatever that topic may be), or (2) a given article that has appeared did not cite particular articles it should have cited. 

This way of doing things would, I think, have the advantage of not assuming a particular, parochial doctrine of "what citations are for." Instead, it would enable each submitter to make the case for some norm(s) they favor on a case-by-case basis. Now, of course, different people may have different norms, but insofar as the process is fair -- everyone can participate -- the process would approximate an organic development of new norms. [Note: people familiar with my work on nonideal justice will recognize that this is just what I take nonideal justice to be -- fair, organic deliberation to deal with extant injustice. So, I not only think the new proposal makes good practical and rhetorical sense; I also think it is defensible on grounds of justice!].

So, what does everyone think? One final note: if we were to move forward with this proposal, I would make sure to present my "monthly reports" in a way that is not "naming and shaming", but rather positively suggesting that the relevant authors and others in the field pay give greater thought to citing the items people make the case for citing.

Comments

[Pierre]

This sounds great. I believe it is a better proposal than your previous one, and more consistent with your objectives (with which I plainly agree). Both what we could call the “demandingness objection” (Aw, I can’t possibly deal with *this* amount of literature) and the “mere catalog objection” (Alright I’ll cite it but that’s just because I was required to do so) are met with this amended proposal. At the “working” stage, this would also improve not-yet-published papers (and thus their citation practice) by allowing (or even mandating: how could one say “Right, I couldn’t plausibly ignore this paper but anyway I didn’t want to cite it”?) an author to account for papers s-he had not included so far (maybe because s-he didn’t find them in a footnote, maybe because the title wasn’t appealing to him/her.

[Jerry Green]

It might also be worth highlighting papers that do a good job with citations. Showing off model papers might be a nice way to reward good behavior in addition to raising questions about bad behavior. And I suspect that this might be a place where positive incentives are more persuasive than negative incentives.

[Marcus Arvan]

JG: I think that's a great idea!

[pessimist]

As a mechanism to hash out new norms, it could be useful. I suspect the only way to induce authors to follow the new norms would be to have journals start rejecting papers for bad citation practices, as Berit Brogaard (in one of the links) says science journals do.

The reason is, it seems obvious to me that philosophers are using citations as a way to signal their status to blind reviewers: people who cite the big names exclusively seem likely (to reviewers) to be the authors who are in a position to read only the top journals and names, increasing the likelihood they're among the high-status crowd that the reviewers, unconsciously or consciously, have a bias towards. So everyone down the status chain has incentive to mimic that behavior as much as they can, since if they don't they'll look much lower status than they are and receive a lower chance of publication. (Did I put this clearly?)

That's a "separating equilibrium" and the best way to collapse it would be to make the scholars who would otherwise cite only the big names or high-status papers employ the more inclusive citation practices you're advocating, so as to switch to a pooling equilibrium where the citations in a paper aren't a function of the author's own status. Again, I don't see how to do so short of having the journals reject papers for bad citation practices since the top journals are so sharply competitive. Given how high-stakes publishing can be for authors, simply having social approval or disapproval wouldn't likely be enough to change behavior.