Guidelines for Inclusive Reviewing Practices

The table below depicts some of the systematic ways that social-personality psychology research with non-dominant groups is often devalued or trivialized and the ways that research with dominant groups is privileged. To avoid unintentionally perpetuating these dynamics in the review process, we suggest following a simple list of dos and don’ts during the review process (provided below the table).

Do:

• Highlight the value of studies using non-dominant samples by commenting on their importance in your review.
• Recognize and comment on the value of applied as well as theoretically-driven research.
• Ensure that reviews serve a constructive, formative function by providing respectful, concrete, and specific feedback with actionable suggestions and potential paths forward.
• Request that authors include demographic information (i.e., where or among which population the research was conducted, often including age, gender, societal status cues like race/ethnicity or caste, nationality of the sample) in the title and abstract for all empirical papers and (when relevant) review papers, not only those that use or synthesize results from non-dominant samples.
• Make realistic requests taking into account the cultural and structural contexts of the research, including timing and conditions, under which the research took place. For example, do not ask authors to address points that are not possible to do in the context of the reported research (e.g., replicate a study about COVID lockdowns after the initial COVID lockdowns are over; run a computer-based study in a sample with low connectivity, etc.).
• Especially when studies rely on homogenous samples from dominant groups that are sometimes assumed to represent the norm, request that authors thoroughly discuss the constraints of generality of their findings, which may include the cultural and/or structural context.
• Demonstrate humility by describing gaps in your knowledge when submitting your assessment. This can help uncover whether judgments of quality are based on the extent to which you are familiar and/or comfortable with the cultural and/or political context of the work or the methodology, and can help the editor determine whether additional expertise would be useful.
• Promote inclusive citation practices, which include not requesting that authors replace literature they cited from underrepresented sources and backgrounds with the literature from journals and scholars in the U.S. and Western Europe, or suggest that their literature review is insufficient without this literature.

Don't:

• Don't use phrases like "belongs in a more specialized journal" or suggest that an article isn't really psychology or isn't suitable for a particular journal just because of its methodological approach (e.g., qualitative methods), sample (e.g., Turkish participants), or a topic/phenomenon that may be less relevant to your own context or social position (e.g., war or occupation).
• Don't question the relevance, importance, or generalizability of the findings just because the sample was from a non-dominant group or underrepresented context or because the research addresses a topic that is less relevant to your own context or social position.
• Don't ask authors to add a control group from a dominant sample (e.g., a white control group) when working with data from a non-dominant sample, because this renders the dominant group as the default.
• Don't ask authors to justify the use of a non-dominant sample if you would not have asked for justification had the authors used a sample of participants from a more dominant group.
• Don't make assumptions about the authors' nationality or recommend that a manuscript be edited by a "native English speaker." When requesting language edits, only do so if these are absolutely central to being able to follow the argument, and not if the issues are simply due to a different style of expression.