Association Between Author Diversity and Acceptance Rates and Citations in Peer‐Reviewed Earth Science Manuscripts

Abstract

The scientific community is becoming more demographically diverse, and team science is becoming more common. Here, we compare metrics of success in academic research, acceptance rates, and citations, among/across differing team compositions regarding demographic diversity. We collected the final decisions and citations as of 2019 of 91,427 manuscripts submitted from 2012-2018 to journals published by the American Geophysical Union. We matched the authors by email on each manuscript to self-provided demographic information within the American Geophysical Union's membership database. This resulted in 20,940 manuscripts matched to nation, gender, and career stage, and 6,015 manuscripts matched to race/ethnicity for manuscripts in which the entire authorship team was affiliated with the United States. Among similar sized authorship teams (teams of two to four), acceptance rates were 2.7, 4.5, and 0.9% higher (p nation < 0.01, p gender < 0.05, p career stage = 0.51) with more than one nation, gender, and career stage, respectively, than nondiverse authorship teams. Diverse papers had 1.2 more citations for international teams than single-nation teams (p nation < 0.01). There were 0.4 and 1.0 fewer citations for authorship teams with more than one gender or career stage than manuscripts with one gender or career stage (p gender = 0.21, p career stage = 0.36). Racially/ethnically diverse teams were associated with 5.5% lower acceptance rates (p < 0.01) and 0.8 fewer citations (p = 0.15) than racially/ethnically homogenous teams. Although not every difference is statistically significant, the overall results are consistent with the notion that diversity can benefit science, but equitable practices and inclusive cultures must also be fostered. Plain Language SummaryThis manuscript uses publication data from a large disciplinary scientific publisher, combined with self-reported demographic information, to understand team diversity as related to scientific outcomes. Acceptance rates and citations are used here to measure the quality of science and impact of a study on the scientific community. We find that in the case of nation, gender, and age diversity, demographically mixed teams have better outcomes. When U.S. author teams have multiracial/multiethnic teams, these scientific outcomes are lower than single-race/ethnicity teams. This is important to reinforce that diversity has the capacity to better science, but also, critically, diversity must be understood within other social contexts regarding opportunity, networks, and resource distribution.We compare each type of demographic diversity to the scientific "quality" of team manuscript submissions to peer-reviewed journals to assess whether/the degree that diversity impacts science. The "quality" of

Promoting inclusive metrics of success and impact to dismantle a discriminatory reward system in science

“…Pervasive racism in science also drives substantial and systemic biases in publication rates, citation rates, and editorial positions [24]. Publication-related metrics show distinct patterns of bias against racially and/or ethnically diverse scientific teams, which experience more than 5% lower acceptance rates and fewer citations than less diverse author teams [41]. Citational segregation-where authors prefer citing authors from the same racial/ethnic group(s)-has been demonstrated with white authors citing other white authors more frequently [24].…”

“…Many efforts to improve diversity in science disciplines have not yet been successful [46][47][48][49]. In fact, gender and racial citation biases remain stable or have even worsened over the last half century [16,[21][22][23][24]41,50], highlighting that efforts to change the system have, by and large, failed to remove systemic biases. Clearly, assessing scientific impact, and thereby assigning value to an individual's scientific contribution, exclusively-or even primarilythrough citations of peer-reviewed literature reflects and amplifies the existing numerous biases that remain embedded within science.…”

Age, Gender, and International Author Networks in the Earth and Space Sciences: Implications for Addressing Implicit Bias

“…A separate analysis comparing author groups and acceptance rates across AGU journals for the same time period (Lerback et al, 2020) shows that the acceptance rates and citations of papers with gender‐diverse and internationally diverse author groups are higher than those for single‐gender author teams and single‐country author teams. This result in the Earth and Space Sciences, which supports results from other studies in other disciplines (Nielsen et al, 2017; reviewed in Hall et al, 2018), indicates that forming diverse teams leads to better and more impactful science.…”

“…Here we focus on the unique author networks rather than team size, persistence, or other dynamics. A related paper examines the relation between these networks and acceptance rates and citations in AGU journals (Lerback et al, 2020).…”

The link between ethnic diversity and scientific impact: the mediating effect of novelty and audience diversity

“…Taking Gini Impurity as measure of diversity and number of citations received within 5 years of publication as measure of scientific impact, they found, using regression analysis and randomized baseline models, that ethnic diversity is positively correlated with scientific impact. Lerback et al (2020), using data for submissions and publications across all American Geophysical Union (AGU) journals, found that diversity in USA-based author teams regarding race/ethnicity (as identified by selfprovided demographic information within the AGU's membership database) is associated with lower acceptance rates and citation rates. However, more studies, using data from different sources and different disciplines, on ethnic diversity are needed especially for understanding the causes behind the relationship between ethnic diversity and scientific impact.…”