As the chief executive officer of Google and its parent company Alphabet, Sundar Pichai said, “A diverse mix of voices leads to better discussions, decisions, and outcomes for everyone”. Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) are important at every stage of the publishing process, from content to authors and editorial teams. Publishing is not a level playing field and not everyone has the same opportunities. The average corresponding author of The Lancet Infectious Diseases articles is still an older White male from a high-income country (HIC). This gender disparity is even more stark for clinical trials, where 67% of our submissions have male corresponding authors. This situation is not acceptable as the world has a 50% female population and low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs) are disproportionately affected by infectious diseases. It will take some time for the baseline differences in the field to change and we hope this change will occur soon.

In the meantime, we would like to call your attention towards aspects of DEI that we have influence over. In The Lancet Infectious Diseases, we aim for a balance between cutting-edge research, such as the newest COVID-19 data, outbreaks of infectious diseases, and development of new antimicrobial agents, and coverage of neglected infectious diseases and topics relevant for marginalized communities. Every recent issue of our journal has incorporated this broad range of infectious disease research, despite the challenges posed by having a small editorial team and a massive increase in submissions since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2022, we invited equal amounts of male and female reviewers to assess our manuscripts and to write linked Comments (52% of our invited Comments came from female researchers). When assessing new submissions, we also endeavor to invite local reviewers familiar with the setting and healthcare system to guide us on the specific context in which a study was done.

In implementing these initiatives, we want to help authors successfully publish their work with us, irrespective of who they are and where they come from. We are interested in engaging with readers, researchers, and peer reviewers about ideas and areas where they think the journal could improve further and highlight things we have done particularly well so we can continue to do them.1

Read more here.

References

  1. Diseases, N. L. I. (2023). Promoting diversity and equity in publishing. Lancet Infectious Diseases, 23(4), 381. https://doi.org/10.1016/s1473-3099(23)00145-7

Disclaimers

  • The material in these reviews is from various public open-access sources, meant for educational and informational purposes only
  • Any personal opinions expressed are those of only the author(s) and are not intended to represent the position of any organization(s)
  • No official support by any organization(s) has been provided or should be inferred