For most Americans, Labor Day weekend means barbeques, late morning sleep-fests, and maybe some catch-up work on the lawn. But for political scientists, this weekend brings other associations, because the major political science conference, APSA, is held that weekend. For me, Labor Day means insomnia, blisters, boredom, fake smiles, stale air, and gallons of coffee. I haven’t been to the conference in four years, but thanks to the marvels of social media, I feel like I’m still there. Oh, yay!
Since I’m in the post-academic phase of my life, I haven’t linked to the long discussions about APSA on twitter and the blogs, but I’ve read them all. I guess I’ll always have a foot in that world.
The discussion this morning is about the gender problems in political science. I’m linking to this discussion, because the findings are relevant to all professions. It’s about how often female scholars are cited in other academic papers and how often they link to themselves.
A former classmate at the University of Chicago, Barbara Walter, has a great paper looking at the citations of female scholars. She found that articles written by men were cited more often that articles written by women.
In that paper, “The Gender Citation Gap,” Ms. Walter and her colleagues found that even after controlling for many variables—including what the subjects wrote about, the methodology they used, and where they worked—women were cited less frequently than men were. In their review of more than 3,000 journal articles published from 1980 to 2006, articles by men received an average of 4.8 more citations than were articles by women. (The average number of citations per article over all was 25.)
And the person most likely to cite your work? Well, that would be yourself, of course. And men cite themselves a lot more than women do.
The average male scholar writing a single-author article cites himself 0.4 times while the average female scholar cites herself 0.25 times. In papers with two male authors, they engage in some self-citation 0.91 times while papers by two female scholars have an average of 0.41 instances of self-citation. These differences are statistically significant. (The authors didn’t say all self-citation was inappropriate, but said they questioned its extent by men.)
Political science is a male-dominated field. 70% of all APSA members are male. I would guess that 90% of the people who attend the conference are male. Other political science conferences have more diversity. I occasionally went to the Urban Affairs Conferences, and they were plenty of pony-tailed guys and women with large ethnic necklaces. Other than a few clusters of female-friend sub-conferences, this profession is male dominated. APSA is a sea of khaki pants and light blue oxford shirts. When I first started attending this conference, I was terrified. I would hang out in the book room and chat with the book editors, who seems a lot nicer and more approachable than the academics. Later, I learned various coping methods.
For women to increase their numbers in this profession and other male-dominated fields, they have to play the game. The lesson of all this is SELF-PROMOTION! Do it. The guys are doing it. And you should be, too.
(Nice paper, Barbara!)
Apt. 11d 
APSA is a sea of khaki pants and light blue oxford shirts.
I only went to APSA once (1995, maybe), but I still wear khaki pants and light blue oxford shirts nearly all the time.
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I never heard of not citing yourself if you had anything even remotely relevant. Also, cite people who will cite you, but maybe avoid actual conspiracy.
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Also, I can’t help but notice that only one of the three authors of that paper is cited in the paper and that author is male.
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I’m not sure I’d lump self-citation and self-promotion together. Both are fine when appropriate. When I cite one of my own papers, it’s usually to save space. So, I might say, “This conclusion raises question X. I have addressed X in my earlier paper, ‘The right answer to question X’.” so that I don’t have to waste space and time on repeating myself. I don’t see that as much different from citing someone else’s paper for the same reason except that I’m (hopefully) more satisfied with what I said. Of course, people can go wild with this in a way that looks bad, but that’s like everything.
Self-promotion I’d consider to be things more like sending out links to a new paper (or re-prints, in the old days). That can easily go too far, but in general is expected and can be good. I like to get such things, and think people should do it. There is just too much work out there to expect people to just find it on their own. You have to work a bit to bring it to people’s attention. If you follow the general rule of “don’t be a dick”, this is both expected and useful.
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When I cite one of my own papers, it’s usually to save space.
That also. Space is tightly constrained in my current field. A typical draft in Word will be only 15 double-spaces pages (leaving off the abstract, references, tables, figures). I don’t know if this is still the case, but twenty years ago political science journals clearly didn’t not care how long somebody blathered on.
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One of my bosses (I’m a legal secretary) has won on appeal more than one key case in our state, ranging from whether retirement benefits constitute wages under the wage and hour laws to contract stuff. He never fails to cite his own cases when appropriate: I mean, HE MADE LAW. He turned questions into actual law in this state. He convinced appellate and supreme court judges in this state that the law is what he said it is.
Cite yourselves! You have made important discoveries or assessments! If you won’t blow your own horn, who is it you think will do it?
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Every year I suggest that maybe we could move APSA so it didn’t coincide with the first day of school and people laugh at me and say that’s impossible. This year two of my male colleagues are at APSA and I am taking kids back to school shopping. Do you think maybe that has something to do with why ninety percent of the participants are male?
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Does Labor Day really coincide with the first day of school? We’ve been back for a week. On Facebook, all my old high school classmates had their kids start at least a week before that.
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Our kids have been back to school for nearly 2.5 weeks.
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I have another week before school starts. I might not survive.
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Having just looked at our kid’s schedule, I think the amount of vacations during the year in increasing. At least, I can’t recall ever getting a Spring Break and an Easter Break that are both five days off from class.
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Cite yourself and cite women, I’d add. I see a lot of lists of key articles people assemble that include, even highlight, women’s scholarship but not so many of these make the actual notes in articles.
I also make the point of assigning at least as many books or articles by women as by men when creating reading lists for courses. It helps to reinforce with my students that there are lots of women doing cutting-edge work in the field.
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I agree with J Liedl. Cite women. Especially — cite your graduate students, especially if what you are publishing is likely to get attention from people for whom their work matters. I have 4 papers currently that I am trying to cite frequently — written 2 each by 2 female recent former graduate students — which I am trying to get a lot of attention to because, well, they are really good, and because they are by very junior people who are female have less chance than they should of being read. Generally – cite people junior to you, especially if you know your own work will be widely read. [my subfield has lots of junior women in it, a number of whom I’m proud to have trained, but my main field has fewer women,and my stuff gets read in the main field as well as the subfield]. If you are prominent and/or male you have extra responsibility for promoting women’s work.
Oh, and JLeidl’s right about assigning work by women in courses too. Though don’t overdo it. One of my recent PhD’s said her first philosophy course, an Intro to Phil course, had ONLY female authors on the syllabus, which might be slightly misleading [at least include Hume, surely].
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I did my best to raise the fashion quotient: tailored shorts; pink dress and top; fun blue dress, etc. Alas I’m him this year so the fashion quotient will be low.
And, yes I cite myself whenever possible!
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