Drive-by citation

A drive-by citation is an academic citation that lists sources without engaging with them.[1] A typical drive-by citation is a single sentence making a claim backed up by one or often a series of references where no clear explanation is given of how a specific citation supports the claim being made. The use of "drive-by" references drive-by shootings, where the shooter immediately flees the scene.

Drive-by citations avoid engagement with the sources that are cited. Nancy Mack used the term in a 2006 article about how to help working-class students develop authoritative voices as writers, where she argued that drive-by citations hinder this by avoiding dialogue with other scholars: "I eschew what I characterize as the “drive-by” citation method in which students fire off the words of an unnamed expert without any explanation. My goal is for students to engage in a responsive dialogue with a scholar."[1]

Drive-by citations may skew citation counts,[2] which can affect scientific journals' impact factor and the citation counts of individual scholars. This type of citation also "runs the risk of misinterpretation, remaining surface level, or never adequately engaging with the issues at hand."[3]

Drive-by citations are more likely to reference well-known or heavily cited works, which can increase the Matthew effect where scholars who are already cited a lot tend to get cited even more. In 2012, R.S. Hawkshaw, S. Hawkshaw and U.R. Sumaila argued this can lead to chains of misunderstanding. Their example is the term tragedy of the commons, which they show is frequently misapplied in scholarship to mean the opposite of what its originator, Garrett Hardin, meant when he coined it in 1968. Hawkshaw et al. argue that this error is made because Hardin's paper on the topic is cited widely and is "a victim of drive-by citation."[4]

References

  1. ^ a b Mack, Nancy (2006). "Ethical Representation of Working-Class Lives: Multiple Genres, Voices, and Identities". Pedagogy. 6 (1): 58–59. doi:10.1215/15314200-6-1-53. I eschew what I characterize as the "drive-by" citation method in which students fire off the words of an unnamed expert without any explanation. My goal is for students to engage in a responsive dialogue with a scholar.
  2. ^ Peez, Anton (2023). "Is Multi-Method Research More Convincing Than Single-Method Research? An Analysis of International Relations Journal Articles, 1980–2018". Security Studies. 33 (1): 71. doi:10.1080/09636412.2023.2262388. the practice of "drive-by citation" or simply citing certain canonical papers as a sub-disciplinary convention may skew citation counts
  3. ^ Craig, Collin; Flores, Wilfredo; C. Moeggenberg, Zarah (2022-03-08). "Introduction to the Special Issue: Working Toward a Definition of Queer Literacies". Literacy in Composition Studies. 9 (2): IX. doi:10.21623/1.9.2.1. When queer BIPOC scholars do get cited, it is often through citation chains meant to do a quick acknowledgement (the so-called drive-by citation), and when there is engagement with their work, it runs the risk of misinterpretation, remaining surface level, or never adequately engaging with the issues at hand.
  4. ^ Hawkshaw, Robert; Hawkshaw, Sarah; Sumaila, U. (2012-11-15). "The Tragedy of the "Tragedy of the Commons": Why Coining Too Good a Phrase Can Be Dangerous". Sustainability. 4 (11): 3148. doi:10.3390/su4113141. hdl:2429/69697. ISSN 2071-1050. He is cited widely because he is the frequent victim of drive-by-citation. The tragedy of the commons is invoked because it sounds good, not for what Hardin was actually advocating.
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