Citation as a Measure of 'Impact': Female Legal Academics at a Disadvantage?

Abstract

This article discusses whether the demand that law academics show citations by a superior court is disadvantageous to women, using the citations of academic work by the High Court of Australia from 2015, 2016 and 2017. The preliminary data show that male academics were cited much more often than female academics (even for works written after 1999), and academics who were cited were associated primarily with ‘elite’ universities in Australia, England and the United States. The use of citation by superior courts may not really show ‘impact’ but may rather indicate that the common law displays historical and unconscious biases.