Geoscience is among the least diverse of STEM disciplines.
Let’s Look at Some Data:
Bernard and Cooperdock 2018, Figure 1b
PhDs earned by US citizens and permanent residents between 1973 and 2016. The largest race/ethnicity category by far is the White non-Hispanic PhD group
Bernard and Cooperdock, 2018
This work interrogated NSF NCSES ‘degree earned’ data and found that while gender parity has increased over the past few decades, geosciences remains the least diverse STEM field, with no improvement in the level of representation of minority groups between 1973 and 2016.
Read the paper here
Check out Rachel’s data page here
Wilson, 2016
Twenty percent of science graduate students were from underrepresented populations, whereas only 12% of graduate students in the geosciences were from underrepresented groups. Similarly, 9% of all science postdoctorates and 8% of geoscience postdoctorates were from underrepresented populations.
AGI Data, 2016
The National Science Foundation’s Survey of Graduate Students and Postdoctorates in Science and Engineering is conducted annually to collect information about enrollments/hiring and demographics of graduate students (master’s and doctoral students) and postdoctoral appointees. AGI’s Workforce Program analyzed the data from 2016 here.
Lerback et al., 2020 Figure 4
Small team (two to four authors) racial/ethnic diversity related to scientific outcomes.
(a) Acceptance rates of manuscripts with U.S. authors are compared to different team compositions with regard to racial/ethnic diversity (n small U.S. groups = 4,450, n matched U.S. single author = 1,040).
(b) Citations rates of manuscripts with U.S. authors are compared to different team compositions with regard to racial/ethnic diversity (n small U.S. groups= 2,448, n matched U.S. single author = 495). Error bars represent 95% confidence intervals in all figures.
Lerback et al., 2020
This work analyzed journal acceptance decisions and article citation data from 91,427 manuscripts submitted to journals published by the American Geophysical Union. between 2012 and 2018. They found that “in the case of nation, gender, and age diversity, demographically mixed teams have better outcomes. When U.S. author teams have multiracial/multiethnic teams, these scientific outcomes are lower than single‐race/ethnicity teams.”
Read the paper here
Check out this EOS piece about the work
Check out this Scholarly Kitchen interview with the authors
Other Resources
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