Works (Un)cited: Investigating the Persistence of Global Exclusion in Peace Studies through Citation Analysis

Peace studies scholars have recently participated in critical and decolonial challenges to global structures of power, including calls to re-centre non-Western knowledge(s) as an antidote to oppressive technocratic approaches to peace. Scholarly practice remains at odds with this commitment. We present a bibliometric analysis of 513,564 citations from 13,257 journal articles published in the field of Peace Studies between 2015 and 2022. Scholarly citations are a marker of authority and esteem, and increasingly central as a metric for scholarly evaluation. Cross-disciplinary research has found citational practices to be exclusionary, reinforcing unequal structures of inclusion and marginalization. The analysis presented here suggests that peace studies conforms to this trend. Citations in the field are heavily dominated by Western scholars located in a few countries, and scholars affiliated with institutions in developing countries are barely cited. This is of particular concern given the calls made within the field to pay more attention to knowledge about peace - both philosophical and practical - produced by marginalized communities. Achieving citational justice in our field requires both awareness-raising and codes of conduct, but also moving beyond diversity approaches, to a deeper commitment to centering the thinking of non-Western scholars.