About this session

Friday, 1:20 PM - 2:50 PM

Evaluating Editorial Policies for Anti-racism in Publishing: A Case Study of SRCD’s Sociocultural Policy

Bias in the sciences (Cell, 2020), and more specifically in published psychological research (Auelua-Toomey et al., 2024), is longstanding and pervasive. The Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD) has committed to anti-racist practices in publishing and recognizes the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion in all parts of the publication process. In 2014, SRCD implemented the Sociocultural Policy (SCP) for Child Development. In 2020, SRCD implemented the Sociocultural Policy (SCP) for all society publications as a measure of accountability for anti-racist publishing, ensuring that SRCD's publications attend to sociocultural diversity and include specific demographic information regarding study samples. The rationale for the SCP implementation states that “As developmental science becomes more global, and the role of context in human development becomes more evident, it is necessary that SRCD publications provide, in addition to age, an indication of the unique characteristics of the sample and the ‘socioeconomic and cultural place’ from which their findings originate.” Providing such information advances anti-racist science by interrogating external and ecological validity and acknowledging that our prevailing knowledge base cannot be limited to narrowly sampled populations. To assess the effectiveness of this policy, the SRCD Publications Committee established the Data Tracking Initiative (DTI) to analyze Child Development publications for SCP adherence. The DTI team is interdisciplinary, ethnically diverse, and spans stages of career development: 12 undergraduate students; 2 graduate students; 1 postdoc; and 5 junior, mid-career, and senior scholars in universities or institutes. This panel discussion, moderated by Miranda Yates (Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, [RWJF]), will cover SCP history, DTI methodological procedure and process, evaluation results, and recommendations for this living policy.