DEI: Who Currently Publishes in JCR?
Recently, JCR Policy Board member Michel Pham and Columbia University doctoral student Jacqueline Pan analyzed some DEI aspects of the published research at JCR for the last three years, to help create a baseline understanding diversity, equity, and inclusion at JCR, at least in published research. A warm thank you goes out to them for this work! Of course, published research is only one side of the equation; we strongly believe we need to collect good data from submitting authors as well (more on that below). But we thought we would report on this recent analysis of published JCR articles from 2018 to April 2021. Please note that these are hand-coded by an external analyst, not self-reported identification.
Using the data on all members of the author team, 52% of published JCR authors since 2018 are female, and 67% are white. In terms of ranks of all published authors, 8% are students, 28% are Assistant Professors, 28% are Associate Professors, and 36% are Professors. 64% of authors are based in the United States, followed by 7% in Canada, 6% in Hong Kong, and 5% in the United Kingdom (the remaining authors hail from around the globe).
We see both similarities and differences in data considering only the first author of published JCR articles. 57% of published JCR first authors since 2018 are female, and 64% are white. In terms of ranks of all published authors, 13% of first authors are students, 50% are Assistant Professors, 23% are Associate Professors, and 14% are Professors. 70% of first authors are based in the United States, followed by 6% in the United Kingdom, 5% in Canada, 6% in Hong Kong, and 5% in France (with the remaining authors from the rest of the world).
But these are the successful JCR authors. In order to put these figures into perspective, we should be able to compare the data from successful authors with the data on all prospective, submitting authors. As we have discussed before, the current Editors have created a mechanism for collecting baseline diversity, equity, and inclusion data in a confidential process. We want to know who is submitting work to the journal, and who is ultimately being published in the Journal of Consumer Research. Third party company Pope Consulting is our partner as we collect anonymized data from submitting author teams and author teams of accepted manuscripts. We provide all prospective authors, as well as all accepted authors, a link to a voluntary survey hosted by Pope, and then they send us anonymized data quarterly.
The voluntary effort of all submitting authors so far is making this important work possible, and we thank those who have given us some data. Although voluntary, we really hope you can help us understand the journal’s community by providing this information.
There will never be a connection between the manuscript information and the DEI survey information. All responses will be completely anonymous; there are no links between any manuscript information and survey responses.
It’s up to our community to provide the data we need to track progress. So please, let us know something about you when you submit your work to JCR, and also when you have work accepted at JCR.
If you have any questions at all, please feel free to email June Cotte.
