Recent studies conducted in different scientific disciplines have concluded that researchers belonging to some socio-cultural groups (e.g., women, racialized people) are usually less cited than other researchers belonging to dominating groups. This is usually due to the presence of citation biases in reference lists. These citation biases towards researchers from some socio-cultural groups may inevitably cause unfairness and inaccuracy in the assessment of articles impact. These citation biases may therefore translate to significant disparities in promotion, retention, grant funding, awards, collaborative opportunities, and publications. In this paper, we conduct the first study aiming at analyzing gendered citation practices in the software engineering (SE) literature. Our study allows reflecting on citations practices adopted in the SE field and serves as a starting point for more robust empirical studies on the analyzed topic. Our results show that some efforts still need to be done to achieve fairness in citation practices in the SE field. Such efforts may notably consist in the inclusion of citation diversity statements in manuscripts submitted for publication in SE journals and conferences.

翻译：近期在不同科学学科中进行的研究表明，属于某些社会文化群体（例如女性、种族化人群）的研究者通常比属于主导群体的其他研究者获得更少的引用。这通常是由于参考文献列表中存在的引用偏见所致。这种针对某些社会文化群体研究者的引用偏见，可能不可避免地导致对文章影响力评估的不公与失准。因此，这些引用偏见可能转化为晋升、留任、科研经费、奖项、合作机会及发表成果等方面的显著差异。本文首次开展旨在分析软件工程文献中性别化引用实践的研究。我们的研究有助于反思软件工程领域所采用的引用实践，并为就该主题开展更稳健的实证研究提供起点。研究结果表明，在软件工程领域实现引用实践的公平性仍需付出努力。此类努力尤其可体现为：在提交至软件工程期刊与会议的手稿中纳入引用多样性声明。