Move over Impact Factor. The new way to evaluate medical research journal articles is the Diversity Factor, a social justice metric based on authors’ gender, race, ethnicity, national origin, and socioeconomic background.
“The medical knowledge system is controlled by a very noninclusive group of academics, and it’s not diverse at all,” says Leo Anthony Celi, a senior research scientist at MIT’s Institute for Medical Engineering and Science, coauthor on the seminal paper set to change the way medical researchers are recognized, rewarded, and promoted.
“It’s about time that scientific publishing caught up with medical school acceptance practices,” explained Pseudolus Mendax, MIT’s Deputy Dean of Diversity Dashboard Diktats. “What good will it do to set aside medical school slots for oppressed identities who wouldn’t otherwise qualify under racist, sexist, and colonialist “meritocratic” standards if they can’t also get a leg up on career success based on the color of their skin or the gender with which they identify?”
MIT’s new Dean of BIPOC Verification agreed, although he cautioned that moving to a system that conferred research grants and career advancement based on the new Diversity Factor would require rigorous identity verification. Otherwise unscrupulous white people might find a way to game the system.
No word yet from MIT’s Social Justice Chancellor on when this new Diversity Factor will be applied across all fields of science publishing.
Story suggested by MIT News