The discussion of gender and citations in submission guidelines of 102 political science journals

Abstract

Citations of journal articles are a measure of scholarly attention and scientific impact. Across disciplines, including political science, there is evidence indicating the presence of a gender citation gap. The gap represents a gender imbalance in publishing and citations that is likely to be perpetuated as it contributes to follow-up imbalances in hiring or funding decisions. In this paper, we review the submission and publication information of 102 English-language journals from political science. The review is guided by a descriptive research question: How many journals address gender imbalances and gender more generally in their guidelines? We present the results of a mixed-methods content analysis that combines a computational text analysis with the manual, qualitative coding of journal information. We observe that fifteen journals out of 102 address gender and citation behavior by encouraging authors to consider the gender balance of their reference lists. With seven mentions, the share of journals discussing gender and citations is higher for the top-25 journals. There is little discussion of this issue in ECPR journals and APSA section and association journals.