Introduction
Journals need to address the diversity of their journals from a universal perspective. The diversity of authors, reviewers, the Editorial Board, Senior Editors and the EIC should be engaged. Neuropsychopharmacology (NPP) has taken a public approach that started with gender balance in 2018 and has expanded to health disparities related to gender, race, ethnicity, LGBTQ+, and early-life adversity. This case study explains how NPP reviewed the existing data and has attempted to increase awareness of all of these topics within the journal via a multi-faceted data driven approach.
Issue
Neuropsychopharmacology is a leader in its field, and is striving to also be a leader in handling diversity within the journal. NPP had the ability to create an intern position at the journal – the intern championed the diversity and inclusion efforts for the journal and has been able to assess data to suggest improvement for collection of data and create change within the submission system to encourage inclusivity. The work of the intern has further created a more permanent position entitled Special Projects Manager that manages the intern and directs special projects at the journal to assist in future projects. What began as an effort to address gender diversity has grown to a full diversity and inclusion project.
Goals
The goal of the internship initially was to undertake projects that were not possible by the staff and editors due to the ongoing workload of the routine processing of journal work. Initially gender disparity was the main goal of the project. The goals were eventually widened to include deeper level metric review of submissions and a broader scope of analysis and included authors, reviewers, editorial board and editors.
Parameter and results
The intern undertook the project in order to determine gender as it related to authors. These results were published in NPP in 2018 (1). The project was then broadened to include the below parameters and results. They used the wording “Grouped as Men” and “Grouped as Women”—each were placed into one of these categories based on information available at the time. They determination was manual initially reviewing the name of each submission. They performed extensive on-line searches detecting gender-specific pronouns using websites and/or photographs to match the first name to their gender. Estimates indicated that in 2018 women represent 39% of tenure-track faculty in neuroscience (2). This was used for comparisons to NPP submissions.
Authors
Data was provided by the journal to determine who was submitting to NPP. The data revealed that 39% of corresponding authors were women for the 2017 for accepted manuscripts (1). This aligned with women working in the field at that time. (2)
Female corresponding authors have improved somewhat compared to 2011, when 34% percent of corresponding authors of accepted manuscripts were women. (1)
Pandemic-related submissions were also reviewed to see if the pandemic had put additional pressure on female submitters to NPP. While overall submissions increased by almost 200 manuscripts (26% increase) in 2020 the number of female corresponding authors was almost exactly in line with the 2018 data at 38.5% (3).
Reviewers
The number of women reviewers in 2017 was 34%, compared to 30% in 2011 showing marginal gain in female reviewers (1).
Suggested reviewers by authors were also taken under consideration for data collection – it was discovered that all genders suggest more men than women when making their recommendations for reviewers (1). This important facet led the team to try to control the narrative when asking for suggesting reviewers, reminding authors to be open minded and remove perceived bias.
Editorial Board and Senior Editors
The efforts of the journal to broaden their gender reach on the Editorial Board by becoming cognizant of the issue have led to positive results. In 2018, 33% were women compared to 2011, 12.5% showing great improvement. The Senior Editors for the journal had a 25% female representation in 2011 and reached 43% by 2018 (1).
Challenges and Outcomes
In efforts to discover the gender balance within the communities of the journal it was discovered that authorship was in line with the tenure track female population. Efforts to better diversify the editorial board are ongoing but have improved over time (1). Although there has never been a female EIC for NPP discussions have begun to raise the level of diversity on the whole and have helped to better inform the journal and its leaders.
When the journal began reviewing the data there was a perception that women were under-represented. The most important part of this exploration has been discovering the amount of diversity that exists within the community should be determined and in turn level set your expectations. It was quickly realized that there should be mindfulness to not conflate a community that might not be able to accommodate the increase of responsibilities. Over working an under-represented community could have unintended consequences. Setting goals based on current data is an important facet to determining how to level set expectations. Expecting a 50:50 divide between men and women reviewers is a high expectation if you have a smaller percentage or pool of women reviewers.
After publishing their 2018 data (1) NPP took three avenues to enhance gender diversity:
The EIC communicated with all Senior Editors asking them to be mindful when considering gender balance when assigning reviewers.
Detailed instructions for reviewer selection for Associate Editors to consider diversity have been added to the ScholarOne submission with the below explanation:
“NPP Editors wish to enhance diversity in all journal functions, including the composition of our reviewer pool, and emphasize that this is an opportunity for authors to participate in this process.” (1)
NPP considers social media as an outlet to learn, educate and have real life conversations. Reducing the potential for implicit bias is the ultimate goal. The social media editor has actively sought feedback and opened conversations to capture real life feedback.
Follow Up
A follow up review was conducted after implementing all of the above to see the impact.
In 2019 there was a small improvement in female reviewers suggested by both men and women. Both genders interestingly still suggest a higher proportion of men than women (4).
There has been small improvement in female authors from 2018-2019; an increase of 1% for submitted manuscripts and an increase of 2% for accepted manuscripts; these proportions were comparative to and meet or exceed the numbers of women in the field (4).
Pandemic related submissions by women were also reviewed to see if there was an unusual drop in female submissions. These numbers do not appear to have changed and are still in line with the 40% of female faculty in the field. (3)
And finally, NPP has begun a Special Collection entitled Highlighting Research on Health Disparities (5), while ancillary to some of the above it dovetails nicely and helps continue the trajectory of equity for all. The below custom question has been added to ScholarOne in which the author self-declares their interest in participation.
“On our website, NPP features a collection of papers entitled "Highlighting Research on Health Disparities". If this manuscript is accepted, should the editors consider it for inclusion in this collection?”
The author is also asked to provide a one-sentence justification.
Next Steps
The Editorial Intern and Special Projects Manager continue to review data and raise further topics to build off of the gender, diversity and equity publications and projects to promote complete balance in all areas of the Journal.
1. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41386-018-0186-6