The representation of authors of color in schizophrenia research articles published in high-impact psychiatric journals

Abstract

Objective: We evaluate how often scholars of color publish papers on schizophrenia in high-impact psychiatric
journals, and whether they are more likely than white authors to prioritize race/ethnicity as a primary variable
of interest in analyses.
Methods: Prior work categorized the types of ethnoracial analyses reported in 474 papers about schizophrenia
published in high-impact psychiatric journals between 2014 and 2016. In this study, the photographs of the first
and last author for each paper were coded as “person of color” (POC) or “white”. Additionally, each author was
asked to self-report their race and ethnicity. The percentage of papers published by white versus POC authors was
calculated. Chi-square analyses tested the hypotheses that (a) white scholars are more likely than POC scholars to
conduct any sort of racial analysis; (b) POC scholars are more likely to conduct primary analyses by race/
ethnicity; and (c) white scholars are more likely to analyze race/ethnicity as extraneous variables.
Results: Eighteen percent of papers were published by POC first authors, and 17% were published by POC last
authors. There were minimal differences in the types of analyses conducted by POC and white authors. Self-reported race/ethnicity showed that Asian scholars were the most highly represented within POC authors (9%
of respondents), but only 3% of authors identified as Hispanic/Latinx and none identified as Black or Indigenous
American.
Conclusions: People of color are underrepresented as authors in US-based schizophrenia research published in
high-impact journals. Culturally-informed mentorship as well as prioritization of race/ethnicity in funding
structures are important to increase representation of POC authors.