Recommendation: Add a competency on diversity and inclusion

Abstract

The focal article by Köhler et al. (2020) is an excellent start to a discussion about how we prepare reviewers for peer review in our journals and beyond. Our response has little disagreement with what is present in the focal article. Instead, we focus on what is omitted: a competency regarding diversity and inclusion (D&I). To that end, we describe a proposed competency, explain why it is important, and provide several examples regarding how this competency might play out in review of manuscripts and in other review settings. Why is a competency for diversity and inclusion necessary? Research in the industrial and organizational (I-O) domain is not representative of the labor market (Bergman & Jean, 2016) and tends to focus on the experiences of workers in the U.S. workforce, overlooking experiences from around the world (Myers, 2016). Despite the fact that many of our samples are college-educated individuals (e.g., undergraduates, professionals, managers, executives; Bergman & Jean, 2016), 38.6% of the U.S. workforce did not have any education beyond high school in 2018 (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2019). In order to remain relevant, interesting, more generalizable, and more applicable, work in the field of I-O psychology needs to consider issues related to class, job type, educational level, international status, and beyond. A competency in diversity (i.e., ways that individuals are different and unique, including the constructs of race, gender, religion, age, nationality, sexual orientation, ability status, parental status, class, education, and beyond; Jordan, 2011) and inclusion (i.e., fostering a climate that allows for diverse individuals to collaborate and connect; Jordan, 2011) would help I-O psychology research become more representative of the labor force, which should in turn make I-O psychology research more applicable and useful to organizations. Notably, we are arguing for competency in D&I issues in all I-O psychology research, not just in the D&I subfield. As scientists, we need to consider whether our research is responsive and responsible to issues of D&I in the domains of interest. Additionally, we need to address the issue of our own privilege (in terms of level of education, access to resources, etc.) and bias, as well as the privilege of those who have been included in I-O research (white collar, educated, White workers) and the biases that exist in our knowledge base. Confronting this privilege is uncomfortable and can be an area of uncertainty for individuals who are unfamiliar with issues related to D&I. The establishment of a formalized competency related to D&I helps alleviate some of this discomfort. The proposed competency for diversity and inclusion A competency for D&I belongs in the foundational knowledge area of the framework and would read something like this:

Inequity in Peer Review in Communication Sciences and Disorders

“…As for content, equity in publishing initiatives should aim for full representation of BIPOC communities and of BIPOC authors (Buchanan et al, in press), as well as use of equitable language throughout the editorial process; see Figure 3. First, journals could create and weight criteria for equity in their strategic planning of what to publish (Buchanan et al, in press;Linkov et al, 2021;Liu et al, 2020). Such a focus could be represented in their mission statement.…”

Inequity in peer review in communication sciences and disorders

“…As the bottom right of Figure 6 shows, there are various actionable steps. First, to ensure BIPOC communities and BIPOC authors are equitably represented in their content, journals could create -and meaningfully weight -criteria for equity in their strategic planning of what to publish (Buchanan et al, in press;Liu et al, 2020). Second, journals could develop benchmarks for representation in their content, analyze their submissions and publications to see if there are racialized outcomes relative to those benchmarks, and then adjust their editorial procedures.…”