Open Science & Inclusion

This posts lists several resources regarding inclusion gaps in the scientific landscape.

Image by ErrantScience

Gender

• Meta-Research: Systemic racial disparities in funding rates at the National Science Foundation

• The gendered nature of independence in the context of research funding and excellence

• The Glass Obstacle Course: Informal and Formal Barriers For Women Ph.D. Students in STEM Fields

• The extent and drivers of gender imbalance in neuroscience reference lists

• Papers authored by women are rated lower or have lower acceptance rates in academic journals (Fox et al. 2019; Hagan et al. 2020; Murray et al. 2018; Walker et al. 2015)

• “Numerous studies have demonstrated that the use of standardized proxies of performance, such as journal ratings and impact factors, can reinforce existing gender inequalities in scientific organizations” (Brooks et al. 2014, Hunter et al. 2010, Nielsen et al. 2017 in Nielsen et al. 2018)

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• 18.43-fold more women and 13.34-fold more men receive more recognition with article-level metrics (Arabi et al. 2023)

• Journals invite too few women to referee

• …exact parity could be achieved as late as 2027 for authoring, 2034 for reviewing and 2042 for editing.

• Why the gender gap in physics has been stable for more than a century

The FEM/UM Citation Guide explains how women and other underrepresented groups can become more visible in science through citation practices

Balanced citer allow you to perform statistical analyses using Python to investigate the equality in gender and race of the first and last authors in your reference list.

Race

• Peer reviewers discriminate based on author race (Nakamura et al. 2021)
• Non-White scientists appear on fewer editorial boards, spend more time under review, and receive fewer citations (Liu et al. 2023)
• Black women in particular are affected by citation erasure (Smith 2021)

Language

• Articles submitted to journals by authors from countries with low English proficiency fare worse during peer review than those with high English proficiency (Burns & Fox 2017; Ross et al. 2006; Saposnik et al. 2014; Tregenza 2002; Walker et al. 2015 - from Fox et al. 2022)

• Journals are less likely to accept papers by researchers in countries where English is not a primary language [25–27].

  • 25. Primack RB, Marrs R. Bias in the review process. Biol Conserv. 2008; 141(12):2919–2920. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2008.09.016

  • 26. Primack RB, Zipf L. Acceptance rates and number of papers in Biological Conservation from 2005 to 2014 for Australia, Brazil, China, India, Spain, and the United States: Trends or noise? Biol Conserv. 2016; 196:50–52. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2016.01.016

  • 27. Smith OM, Davis KL, Pizza RB, Waterman R, Dobson KC, Foster B, et al. Peer review perpetuates barriers for historically excluded groups. Nat Ecol Evol. 2023; 7:512–523. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-023-01999-w PMID: 36914773

• Non-native English researchers need:

  • up to 91% more time to read a paper in English

  • up to 51% more time to write their own paper

  • Their papers will be rejected 2.6 times more often by journals

  • If accepted, they’ll have to revise it 12.5 more times

  • When they present in English (they will often avoid English speaking conferences and oral presentations), they need up to 94% more time to prepare their presentations.

Resources

From Fox et al. 2022:

• Peer reviewers favour articles by authors from higher-income (Demarest et al. 2014; Harris, Macinko, et al. 2017; Harris, Marti, et al. 2017; Kowal et al. 2022; Saposnik et al. 2014)

• or favour papers by authors that are from prestigious institutions (Blank 1991; Tomkins et al. 2017),

• or with prestigious reputations (Huber et al. 2022; Okike et al. 2016),

• favouring authors that are senior (Pleskac et al. 2021),

• or disfavouring newcomers to a discipline (Seeber & Bacchelli 2017).

Note

open by default, and equitable by design - Heather Joseph

Resources to improve inclusion

• Disrupting Racism and Global Exclusion in Academic Publishing: Recommendations and Resources for Authors, Reviewers, and Editors (Ledgerwood et al. 2023)
• A new tool for evaluating health equity in academic journals; the Diversity Factor

More information

• Labor advantages drive the greater productivity of faculty at elite universities
• List of references regarding diversity, biases, and inclusivity studies and opinion pieces
• Systemic racism in science: Reactions matter
• Multilingual Data Science: Ten Tips to Translate Science and Tech Content
• Open Grant Reviewers - Strategies to mitigate bias for grant reviewers
• Why Diverse Teams Outperform Homogeneous Teams
• Knowledge Equity Network
• Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) metrics: Breaking barriers in Open Source
• GitLab Hiring initiatives
• An SPSP-Sponsored Video Conversation on the Importance of Inclusive Citing
• Being non-WEIRD in WEIRD Academia
• Many Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion strategies and plans fail
• A quick guide to data collection for LGBTQ+ characteristics
• Making your journal an inclusive home for authors and readers from the Global South
• Inequities in Authorship
• Labor advantages drive the greater productivity of faculty at elite universities
• List of references regarding diversity, biases, and inclusivity studies and opinion pieces
• FAIR enough? Building DH Resources in an Unequal World
• A Resource to Support Decolonization of the Undergraduate Chemistry Curriculum
• Not the Only One