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It expands your audience and your impact. 

Over the last five years, publishers of academic books and calls for submissions increasingly have a statement explicitly directing authors to be self-conscious that the text they reference be international in that it includes authors from across the world. This might be interpreted as principally a nod to inclusivity. Or that it is a marketing one that recognizes that the market for books, including those about research methods, is global. 

Added Advantages to Impact

Purposeful attention to generating a reference list for a chapter or article that reflects international journals and authors from countries outside the U.S. has some added advantages for the author as well. 

Prominent among the advantages of exposure to the work of investigators outside a familiar network is the potential to expand the audience for your work and its potential to be cited by others. This is part of the politics of publishing in academia.

Promotion at a Research University Requires an International Network

People familiar with the work of academics in a research-intensive environment often think the merit system prioritizes quality over quantity. To a degree, quantity of publications takes priority over quality, particularly at the start of an academic career. Quality comes into play later in terms of an expectation that you have earned an international reputation. 

To develop an international reputation requires an international network of colleagues. A big way this is accomplished is through presenting papers at conferences in international venues.

Another way to accomplish this is through the reference lists you construct for your publications and the depth of understanding you show of their work when you reference them in your text. Sources like ResearchGate and Academia, alert an author when something is published that references your work. Savy authors keep an eye on these and, on occasion, reach out and make contact with those citing them. This is one way to build an international network that includes people you’ve never met.

Postscript

E. G. Creamer, author of this blog, wrote a book in the mid-1990s about faculty research productivity and the myth that women are less productive that men. It garnered national attention. It addresses the issues of referencing and citation practices and how these depend on friendship networks. After its publication, the highly esteemed Chronicle of Higher Education published a piece about it. See: https://www.chronicle.com/article/why-dont-women-publish-as-much-as-men/