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The giant plan to track diversity in research journals

Efforts to chart and reduce bias in scholarly publishing will ask authors, reviewers and editors to disclose their race or ethnicity.
  1. Holly Else
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  2. Jeffrey M. Perkel
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Cartoon of showing hands in blue, pink, green and yellow holding pens and filling in a census form

Illustration by Camelia Pham/Folio Art

In the next year, researchers should expect to face a sensitive set of questions whenever they send their papers to journals, and when they review or edit manuscripts. More than 50 publishers representing over 15,000 journals globally are preparing to ask scientists about their race or ethnicity — as well as their gender — in an initiative that’s part of a growing effort to analyse researcher diversity around the world. Publishers say that this information, gathered and stored securely, will help to analyse who is represented in journals, and to identify whether there are biases in editing or review that sway which findings get published. Pilot testing suggests that many scientists support the idea, although not all.

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Nature 602, 566-570 (2022)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-00426-7

Updates & Corrections

  • Correction 28 February 2022: An earlier version of this article wrongly referred to 700,000 manuscripts analysed in one study as published; in fact, the manuscripts were submitted to RSC journals, but not all were published. The graphics ‘Early data on race and ethnicity from journals’ and ‘Editors at high-profile journals’ have been updated to correct minor typos.

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Supplementary Information

  1. Journal responses on diversity

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