Definition of academic journals
An academic journal refers to a periodical that contains articles written by experts in a particular field of study. Such journals are expected to discuss the research results in the certain field of study covered by the journal.
In addition, scientific articles often concern surveys, and they may reflect the summary of the recent findings on a topic. Obviously, academic journals are an important platform for scholars where they can present or find the latest developments they are interested in.
The journals are usually peer-reviewed, which means the articles must be approved by experts in the field before they are published. This makes scholarly publications quite a reliable source of scientific information; therefore, they may be used among researchers, university lecturers, students, and the general public.
In addition, such periodicals help understand the progress of contemporary knowledge in the research field; and research papers are important as they cultivate new ideas for further research and foster innovations or creativity among those who undertake science.
Importance of Diversity and Inclusivity in Academia
Today’s scientific topics aim to discuss humanity’s most pressing challenges, like achieving economic growth and technological progress, ensuring the country’s, improving knowledge quality and educational standards, overcoming stereotypes, and encouraging freedom.
There is growing evidence that demonstrates the benefits of equity, diversity, and inclusion in academic excellence.
However, the representatives of developing or low-income nations, women, ethnic and cultural minorities, and individuals with disabilities are systematically discriminated against or even excluded from promotions, publications, and participation in prospective projects.
We strongly believe that improving Inclusivity and fostering diversity may bring positive changes within academic journal development and provide publication opportunities worldwide, improving a scholarship culture and increasing scholarly productivity.
At the same time, discrimination has a negative impact on science and the wider society, as well as on the education, careers, and well-being of individuals who are discriminated against.
Moreover, the lack of diversity in scientific publications can transform your successful journal into an unpleasant platform for early career or underrepresented scientists, forcing them to search for alternatives.
The Role of academic journals in promoting diversity and Inclusivity
We completely agree that the discrimination of certain groups because of their beliefs, culture, religion, sexuality, gender, abilities, socioeconomic background, or skin color is morally wrong. And it is particularly harmful to scientific enhancement, which should be more transparent, democratic, equitable, coherent, rule-based, predictable, and non-discriminatory.
Recent findings show that academia has a diversity problem that seriously affects scientific journal publishing. In fact, the scholarly communication system remains dominated by Western countries. This leaves out many voices in non-EU or Asian countries underrecognized within the editorial boards or peer-review process, and also in journal authorship.
This imbalance extends to geographic representation, where over 80% of editorial board members are based in high-income countries and fewer than 5% are based in lower-middle-income or low-income countries. In addition, none of the editors-in-chief, and only 27 (0.1%) editors in total, were women based in low-income countries.
The most represented region of editorial board members’ countries was North America (39.5%), followed by Europe and Central Asia (32.9%), with 35.2% of editors coming solely from the United States.
The current lack of diversity in these leadership roles prevents innovation development and creates a bias in how knowledge is shaped and interpreted. In the future, it will lead to the limitations of further professional advancement of underrepresented groups.
The first step to increasing diversity and inclusion at the academic journal is building clear publication ethics when making a commitment to diversity a part of its core mission and outlining the action steps to increase diversity among its editorial board, reviewers, and authors to ensure that this mission is an active aspect of the journal principles.
Underrepresentation groups in academic journals
Representation of people from diverse backgrounds and perspectives in academic journals is one of the challenges in contemporary scholarly publishing. The authorship diversity in published scientific literature has a significant impact on knowledge development and innovative advancements. Consequently, changes are needed in academic journals to bring accessibility in academic journals to the manuscripts written by scholars representing all nations and reflecting more varied topics.
The findings show that underrepresentation in academia brings knowledge that appears to be one-sided and omits the varied perspectives of our global population. Moreover, the growing body of evidence on the lack of inclusion in scientific knowledge production has far-reaching impacts on the power dynamics in formulating and disseminating scientific data and knowledge.
Advantages of Diversity and Inclusivity in Research
The diversity and Inclusivity of the research team influence its strength, productivity, and intellectual potential. Diversity of experience, age, physical ability, religion, race, ethnicity, gender, and many other attributes contributes to the richness of the environment for research.
Diversity and Inclusivity also bring such advantages as differences in discipline, intellectual outlook, cognitive style, and personality to offer a breadth of ideas and further construct a dynamic scholarly community.
Diverse groups demonstrate increasing creativity, innovation, and problem-solving. Yet diversity may also bring challenges like less cohesiveness, cross-cultural barriers, less effective communication, increased anxiety, and greater discomfort for some community members.
Anyway, respect and appreciation of each other’s cultural and stylistic differences, becoming aware of unconscious assumptions and behaviors may positively influence our scientific progress, and doing research inclusively means doing research well.
Impact of Diverse Perspectives on Knowledge Advancement
Diversity has ethical and political value creating a solid bridge between normative and mechanistic considerations and demonstrating why and what advantages collective intelligence may bring.
Diversity and Inclusivity are valuable for obvious reasons of justice and fairness. Moreover, demographic and cognitive diversity often interact, given that geographic differences can affect what information people have via different life experiences or cultural values.
Demographic differences can also affect how people share information if they are biased to gain information from those more similar to themselves or to distrust information from those who are different.
Also, we suggest that diversity and inclusivity matter for knowledge advancement, making them interactive and informational.
Informational refers to the contributions that individuals bring to collective endeavors: the relevant information that may help solve the problem. And interactive refers to how the group uses those contributions while collaborating: how relevant information is shared, integrated, aggregated, and implemented. Geographic, cultural, and economic factors can significantly affect both informational and interactional domains.
Collective problem solving brings analysis of different directions of the problem and may help find new information. Diversity and Inclusivity often create unpredictable outcomes that are beneficial for knowledge advancement. As a result, scholarly articles become interesting, and attract more readers improving academic freedom, the peer review process, and citation.
What Can Journals Do to Promote Diversity and Inclusivity
The evidence exposes how much work needs to be done to promote gender diversity and cultural Inclusivity in scholarly journals, including improving transparency and the opportunities for exposure to relevant academic experiences.
The EIKI team focuses its efforts on solving these problems and promotes diversity and Inclusivity within the publishing process. We are deeply convinced that our steps must include the following:
Addressing Bias and Promoting Inclusive Practices, which is also valid for implementing blind peer review processes, establishing diversity policies and guidelines, and training reviewers on unconscious bias awareness;
Increasing Representation of Underrepresented Groups, including encouragement of diverse authorship, supporting early-career researchers from marginalized communities, and collaboration with diverse research networks and institutions;
Broadening the Scope of Research Topics and, in addition, encouraging interdisciplinary research, promoting studies on underrepresented areas, exploring intersectionality in academic research;
Collaborative Initiatives for Diversity and Inclusivity that also features partnerships with diversity-focused organizations, sharing best practices across academic communities, creation of mentorship programs for underrepresented scholars;
Engaging with Global Perspectives that concern encouraging international collaborations, translating and promoting research in different languages, and including diverse cultural perspectives in editorial decision-making.
Indeed, studies show that diverse researchers bring unique perspectives and innovation. Groups of researchers with greater diversity in terms of gender, race, ethnicity, geographic location, and socioeconomic standing may be more productive and creative. Furthermore, their papers concern more relevant topics and tackle the problems from a broader range of perspectives.
Today, a lot of responsibility falls on the editorial teams to ensure that we are publishing diverse content and seeking out people from diverse backgrounds to write and review our journals. Promoting diversity and Inclusivity in academia is a critical imperative of contemporary science that is supposed to maximize the studies and encourage knowledge advancement.
