Mission and Vision


We seek to enhance recognition and citation of Black academic voices. Our approach requires a shift from traditional citation practices that are passive and white-centric to active citation practices that both quantify and equilibrate racial representation.

To achieve our long-term goal of equitable representation of Black voices in cited work, we will create and
maintain a searchable, dynamically grown database of work authored by Black academics.

Key features
1) Community: user-curated content
2) Impact: amplify the central voices of Black academics
3) Transparency: clear criteria for inclusion with respect for self-identification
4) Equity: an easily accessible resource that will simplify the work needed for fair citation practices



Community
Goal: self-sustaining, dissemination of work to non-Black academics

  • Database entries should be as simple and user-run as possible.
  • We rely on submission by peers for the main database as well as resources available to our scholars.
  • Submissions are vetted by Cite Black Authors team members and promoted to appropriate networking communities. 

Impact
Goal: specific elevation of Black academic prestige

  • Scholars working towards tenure and promotion, practitioners advancing research in the field, and graduate scholars looking to advance their academic standing will rely heavily on publications and citations of their scholarly work.
  • This may be evidenced by PubMed indexing or impact factors.
  • Publications may include non-Black authors, but the Black scholar must grant permission to have his/her/their work included. 

Transparency
Goal: minimize risk of misidentification, maximize respect for self-identification

  • Any identification (whether submitted by the author or by someone else) will be assumed to be true by default
  • There will be a clear and rapid mechanism to remove scholars from the database that prove to provide misleading information. 

Equity
Goal: curate a space of easily accessible, peer-reviewed Black scholars, and scholarly work.

  • CBA is intended to create a more efficient and expedited platform to access self-identified Black authors in various fields.
  • Our criteria for accessibility and equity includes website user design, linguistic dialects and modes of communication, and other considerations.