Brian Leiter Has Cracked the Case of “Citation Rings”

Last week, Brian Leiter reported on his Law School Reports on alleged “citation rings.” Here’s how the caper works: Mid-level scholars cross-commit to citing one another’s work to boost their citation counts. So says a “younger scholar” who reported it to some unnamed person who reported it to Brian Leiter. Professor Leiter finds the practice reprehensible.  

There is no scholarly purpose served by “citation rings.”  There are ways to detect such pattersn in citations, although I hope it won’t be necessary to use them.  But if they are identified, then Deans should be encouraged to impose disciplinary measures on faculty found guilty of this kind of scholarly malpractice.

In my view, two things are surprising about this. First I am surprised that Professor Leiter dialed the outrage right up to ten and called for investigation, which I think would be harder than he thinks, and sanctions. Second, I’m surprised the junior level reported rather than emulated the behavior of more experienced scholars.

On the first point, I imagine that the citation ring gambit occurs when scholars doing related work meet up at conferences or gatherings or even just on social media. Finding a way to cite a colleague is not hard, so long as there is some hook, and if there is some hook, the crime will go undetected. The student editors would likely question a citation that did not relate to the text of the article. An investigating dean, or the academic mischief forensics expert to whom the task would be delegated, would have to find a citation that slipped through the cracks, find a reciprocal citation that also slipped through the cracks, and then begin the interrogation. I, for example, have cited Brian Leiter. I think I can justify it. If he ever cited me, he’d be toast if he were mid-level. What possible motivation would he have to cite me, absent a quid pro quote?

But I have suggested in an earlier post, that “citation rings” are completely unnecessary. People who are at schools that care about citation counts cite other people at such schools because, almost inevitably, they know each other, share work, see each other at conferences, and think of one another has having made contributions to the field that are worthy of citing, even if only to but see. 

A few years have now passed since that earlier post, so I will say a few words more for those who missed it. In my view, even though I share a job title with people at top schools (“The Legal Academy’) my job is different from theirs. I teach in the Other Legal Academy (OLA), and what that means is that I mostly teach. I do write; I’m doing so right now, and thank you for reading. But you likely never have read (or cited to) my scholarship. I engage in my scholarship earnestly and passionately, but I know that it will have the impact of a feather thrown into the Grand Canyon, if I can even find a publisher, which has gotten significantly harder in the past decade for those of us in the OLA.

Things work differently in The Legal Academy. People there also work earnestly and passionately, and if they are realistic, they may conclude that the impact of their work is akin to lobbing bricks into the Grand Canyon. But when it comes to citation, they have a huge advantage over me. I am much more likely to cite a paper I hear delivered or read in draft than I am to cite something I come across randomly. But I go to a grand total of two conferences a year, and my law school hosts two outside lectures a year. I have not been invited to give a lecture at another U.S. law school in well over a decade. So people don’t read my work in draft and they don’t hear my scintillating presentations.

Moreover, if you are at the top of your field, you don’t come across things randomly. You know your field; that’s your job, and it’s a big job. If you have some confidence that you already know the important voices in your field, you don’t go digging around for the sixty-page law review articles you missed. If your research assistant comes across something, you can add it to a string cite.  You’ve gathered enough material to engage with already from the recent papers from known quantities. You make your name and reputation by responding to them, not to me.

So if citation rings exist, I am surprised, but not scandalized. If they exist, they smack of a desperation induced by the stupidity of paying attention to citation counts. C’mon The Legal Academy. You are better than that. You don’t need a proxy to help you estimate the value of your colleagues’ work, especially as the proxy is flawed.