Reviewer Zero: Changing the Culture of Peer Review to Increase Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

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Science advances because scientists collect data, develop methods, and generate theories that become part of a shared scientific record. To be part of this shared record, scientific works go through peer review by other scientists. Although peer review is intended to promote rigorous standards, it also has consequences for the scientific workforce - for who wants to stay and who is able to stay, in research-focused careers. Despite peer review’s place as a core scientific practice, learning how to engage with peer review is not explicitly taught. Few people receive training or oversight to ensure that reviewers provide feedback that is helpful, professional, and culturally sensitive (i.e., delivered in a way that does not marginalize underrepresented minority scholars). Graduate students’ experiences with peer review can influence whether they decide to stay in the STEM pathway. This project examines peer review with an eye to equity (are outcomes and processes equitable across groups), inclusion (does peer review offer experiences of fit and belonging across groups), and diversity (does peer review contribute to increasing the range of identities and experiences constituting the field). This NSF Innovations of Graduate Education (IGE) award to Indiana University, Columbia University, and California State San Bernardino seeks to foster diversity, equity, and inclusion within science by improving peer review culture and graduate students’ ability to navigate peer review. This project supports the innovative structure and goals of Reviewer Zero, a coalition of faculty and graduate students in psychology and neuroscience working to understand and intervene to increase equity in peer review processes. Reviewer Zero envisions a “reset” of peer review culture in which reviews serve a formative rather than gatekeeping function. This project will develop strategic programming with two audiences: the historically underrepresented graduate students most directly affected by inequitable systems of peer review, and the reviewers/editors who occupy positions of power in making peer review decisions. The project will design, deliver, and assess interventions that build awareness, knowledge, and support for each audience. Specifically, the project asks how targeting different aspects of the culture cycle can best shift peer review culture toward greater equity. By re-imagining ideas about what peer review is, the evidence-based training will engage individuals with new tools and supports, whether they are trainees or reviewers. A new paper development system (Formative And Interactive Review) will provide a novel institutional structure for fundamentally different interactions between reviewers and trainees. Outreach and partnerships with existing institutions (journals, societies) will lead to the dissemination of new views of the goals and processes of peer review. Towards these goals, this project will implement a comprehensive strategy to increase diversity, equity, and inclusion in the peer review process by (a) working with reviewers/editors to shift culture and (b) providing direct support and training to graduate students navigating peer review. By studying how engaging with program activities affects trainee or reviewer/editor knowledge, skills, and abilities, the project will contribute to understanding how shifts in culture cycles occur.The Innovations in Graduate Education (IGE) program is focused on research in graduate education. The goals of IGE are to pilot, test and validate innovative approaches to graduate education and to generate the knowledge required to move these approaches into the broader community.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.