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Article History

Received: 19 February 2024

Accepted: 28 May 2024

First Online: 8 July 2024

Declarations

: BHP, KJM, and JDH are co-inventors on a patent related to MDPs.

: Recent work in several fields of science has identified a bias in citation practices such that papers from women and other minority scholars are under-cited relative to the number of such papers in the field [–]. Here we sought to proactively consider choosing references that reflect the diversity of the field in thought, form of contribution, gender, race, ethnicity, and other factors. First, we obtained the predicted gender of the first and last author of each reference by using databases that store the probability of a first name being carried by a woman [, ]. By this measure and excluding self-citations to the first and last authors of our current paper), our references contain 6.7% woman (first)/woman (last), 14.46% man/woman, 16.52% woman/man, and 62.31% man/man. This method is limited in that (a) names, pronouns, and social media profiles used to construct the databases may not, in every case, be indicative of gender identity and (b) it cannot account for intersex, non-binary, or transgender people. Second, we obtained the predicted racial/ethnic category of the first and last author of each reference by databases that store the probability of a first and last name being carried by an author of color [, ]. By this measure (and excluding self-citations), our references contain 27.35% author of color (first)/author of color (last), 12.11% white author/author of color, 25.88% author of color/white author, and 34.66% white author/white author. This method is limited in that (a) names and Florida Voter Data to make the predictions may not be indicative of racial/ethnic identity, and (b) it cannot account for Indigenous and mixed-race authors or those who may face differential biases due to the ambiguous racialization or ethnicization of their names. We look forward to future work that could help us to better understand how to support equitable practices in science.