Inequity in Peer Review in Communication Sciences and Disorders

Abstract

Purpose: The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) has committed to advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) by retaining and advancing Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) individuals in the discipline of communication sciences and disorders (CSD), amid critical shortages of faculty to train the next generation of practitioners and researchers. Publishing research is central to the recruitment, retention, and advancement of faculty. However, inequity in peer review may systematically target BIPOC scholars, adding yet another barrier to their success as faculty. This viewpoint article addresses the challenge of inequity in peer review and provides some practical strategies for developing equitable peer-review practices. First, we describe the demographics of ASHA constituents, including those holding research doctorates, who would typically be involved in peer review. Next, we explore the peer-review process, describing how inequity in peer review may adversely impact BIPOC authors or research with BIPOC communities. Finally, we offer real-world examples of and a framework for equitable peer review. Conclusions: Inequity at the individual and systemic levels in peer review can harm BIPOC CSD authors. Such inequity has effects not limited to peer review itself and exerts long-term adverse effects on the recruitment, retention, and advancement of BIPOC faculty in CSD. To uphold ASHA's commitment to DEI and to move the discipline of CSD forward, it is imperative to build equity into the editorial structure for publishing, the composition of editorial boards, and journals content. While we focus on inequity in CSD, these issues are relevant to other disciplines.

Sentence production and sentence repetition in autistic adolescents and young adults: Linguistic sensitivity to finiteness-marking

“…Dialects vary in how they mark for finiteness, such that dialectal variation and LI each influence expressive language in terms of morphosyntactic production (Oetting et al, 2016). Yet, clinical language research assumes General American English (GAE) is the norm (Oetting, 2020), and evaluators of science may perpetuate the myth that only minoritized individuals speak dialects other than GAE (Girolamo et al 2022a). Accurate language assessment requires both representation in research and linguistic sensitivity without racialized assumptions about language background (Plaut, 2010).…”