Non-White scientists appear on fewer editorial boards, spend more time under review, and receive fewer citations

Abstract

Disparities continue to pose major challenges in various aspects of science. One such aspect is editorial board composition, which has been shown to exhibit racial and geographical disparities. However, the literature on this subject lacks longitudinal studies quantifying the degree to which the racial composition of editors reflects that of scientists. Other aspects that may exhibit racial disparities include the time spent between the submission and acceptance of a manuscript and the number of citations a paper receives relative to textually similar papers, but these have not been studied to date. To fill this gap, we compile a dataset of 1,000,000 papers published between 2001 and 2020 by six publishers, while identifying the handling editor of each paper. Using this dataset, we show that most countries in Asia, Africa, and South America (where the majority of the population is ethnically non-White) have fewer editors than would be expected based on their share of authorship. Focusing on US-based scientists reveals Black as the most underrepresented race. In terms of acceptance delay, we find, again, that papers from Asia, Africa, and South America spend more time compared to other papers published in the same journal and the same year. Regression analysis of US-based papers reveals that Black authors suffer from the greatest delay. Finally, by analyzing citation rates of US-based papers, we find that Black and Hispanic scientists receive significantly fewer citations compared to White ones doing similar research. Taken together, these findings highlight significant challenges facing non-White scientists.

You do not receive enough recognition for your influential science

“…The San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) attempted to address one such structural problem: the inappropriate use of journal-level metrics like the Journal Impact Factor that, because of online journals’ artificial scarcity, severely limits the number of researchers who receive such prestigious signals on their track records (1). Journal-level metrics tend to favor more established, male, and white investigators (15, 17), potentially amplifying structural inequalities in the workforce.…”

“…Challenges in maintaining a sustainable biomedical research workforce in the United States have concerned scientists and policymakers alike for years. The workforce has been skewing older for decades (13,14), underrepresents African American/Black (AA/B) researchers (15)(16)(17), and has traditionally been male-dominated (18)(19)(20). These trends have exacerbated concerns about the sustainability of the U.S. biomedical research workforce.…”

Changing the culture of peer review for a more inclusive and equitable psychological science.

“…Racial disparities exist in grant funding (Chen et al, 2022; Ginther et al, 2011, 2018; Nguyen et al, 2023; Taffe & Gilpin, 2021), with at least some of the disparities in National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding arising from the grant criterion scores assigned by reviewers (Erosheva et al, 2020) as well as reviewer decisions about which grants to discuss and what research topics are preferred (Hoppe et al, 2019). Across STEM fields, gender and race disparities have been documented in citation practices (Bertolero et al, 2020; Kozlowski et al, 2022; Liu et al, 2023). Women compared to men in psychological science secure fewer tenure-track positions and earn lower salaries, among other gaps (Gruber et al, 2021).…”

“…Institutional practices around accountability and transparency can contribute to greater procedural fairness of the review process. For example, White scientists are overrepresented on editorial boards, whereas scientists who are Black, Hispanic, Asian, and Pacific Islander are underrepresented (Liu et al, 2023). Professional societies or publishers who ostensibly value diversity, equity, and inclusion should be monitoring and sharing the diversity of their editorial boards and reviewers.…”

Racial Inequity in Key Publication Metrics

“…Now Bedoor AlShebli of New York University Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, and her colleagues add to the growing evidence for publication inequities by showing that-in all countries and in all scientific fields-non-white researchers are underrepresented on journal editorial boards and have longer wait times for publishing their research, a previously undocumented finding [1]. The data also show that racially minoritized groups are less likely to be cited than their white counterparts.…”