But there’s also a sense in which one has a responsibility to find out what’s been published in an area of work and to avoid replication without citation. That’s been a semi-regular topic of discussion here (think Kieran’s complaints about physicists and social network analysis, or the “Eurovision” incident). In my subfield (International Relations), I do think there’s certain laziness about citing articles from certain journals (*cough* IO cough) when articles in other journals are actually more on point.

And there’s also the larger question of how citation practices impact the careers of scholars; certainly there are cases in which scholars routinely fail to cite work they’re familiar with, and even if those reasons are benign, that failure helps to marginalize the people they’re failing to cite.

Yes, of course, like Henry I’ve read articles or books and thought “WTF” when I don’t see a reference to my work, but I’ve learned to get over it. What I do see (particularly when reviewing) are scholars who aren’t adventurous enough to stray beyond one or two journals—or “must read” articles—and thus miss stuff that they’re replicating or really ought to deal with in order to improve their argument. On the other hand, I’ve had reviewers criticize me for not including a reference to some article that makes the same point as a number of other articles in a string citation, and at least twice that’s because I needed to reduce my word count.

Which raises another issue: how the decreasing maximum length of journal articles encourages us to skimp on citations…..

No, I do not think this is “pretty much the same thing.”

D. Nexon asks: What rules of justice and fairness apply to citation practices?
Since it is virtually impossible to cite all the relevant literature on any topic of any consequence that has been around for any length of time, it seems to me that there must be a large element of judgment and discretion in citation practices. The notion that, as a broad proposition, “rules of justice and fairness” apply to citation practices seems very dubious to me. Rules of accuracy and attribution obviously apply, and I think we all know what those are. But these are not the same as rules of justice and fairness. If, for example, I write something and I take an idea directly (or indirectly) from Nexon, then I damn well better cite Nexon for that idea. But if I write about a topic that Nexon has written about and I don’t cite Nexon (say in a string citation of “see XYZ on [the general topic]”), I don’t agree that I am being “unfair” or “unjust” to Nexon. In that case I may (or may not) be revealing myself as a shoddy, careless, lazy, and/or inferior scholar, but that’s my problem. I don’t think fairness or justice much enters into it. That, at least, is my off-the-cuff reaction.

Monboddo – since I don’t otherwise know Rowley or his work, I am not going to comment on ‘em. Could be that he is otherwise an intellectually meticulous supergenius whose hobbies comprise rescuing fluffy kittens from burning skyscrapers and discovering the cure for cancer. But this article is a real piece of work.

But we do often expect certain scholars to be cited on specific subjects, which strikes me as pretty much the same thing as saying they have an “intellectual property right” to the topic. And surely, sometimes, those scholars are cited for reasons unrelated to the actual “merit” of their contribution in the subject area. Individual citation choices may have ripple effects on the status of a piece of scholarship down the road. Scholarly careers can be made or broken on whether their work becomes a part of the “citation cannon” for a particular domain of research.

So what should we do—if anything—to make sure that scholars get their “just desserts” for their work? Once we move beyond the domain of plagiarism, what kinds of rules of justice and fairness apply to citation practices?

[1] John D. French and Daniel James, “The Travails of Doing Labor History: The Restless Wanderings of John Womack Jr.,” Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas 4 (summer 2007): 95-116.
[2] John Womack Jr., “On Labor History, Material Relations, Labor Movements, and Strategic Positions: A Reply to French and James (as Nice and Civil as I Can Make It),” Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas 5 (summer 2008): 117-123 (not currently pay-walled); John D. French and Daniel James, “Polemics and an ‘Army of One’: Responding to John Womack, Jr.” Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas 5 (summer 2008): 125-129. (Also seemingly available to all.)

If academics don’t work out for him, he could always write speeches for Sarah Palin.