Brinda Sarathy: 12 Women Scholars on undercitation of scholarship by women and people of color

12 Women Scholars, an environmental history writing group that includes IAS dean Brinda Sarathy, has issued a challenge to scholarly journals and presses. The group posted “A Disturbing Pattern” on the Inside Higher Ed website, exposing a pattern of inadequately citing or entirely omitting the scholarship of women and people of color in other relevant publications.

The authors note: “Entrenched marginalization – based on sexism, racism or other forms of discrimination – is a larger structural problem in academe. We focus on citational policy as one way to begin to address bigger issues.” The post goes on to detail a set of new best practices that the authors urge editors of journals to adopt in order to ensure inclusive citation and an end to plagiarism of work by women and BIPOC and Global South scholars.