Not Enough: Efforts to Diversify Biogeosciences Benefit Limited Segment of Society

We examined data from the American Geophysical Union (AGU), the world’s largest earth and space science society, to characterize demographics of multiple milestones in a biogeoscientists’ career. Geoscientists of color and White women make up a smaller proportion of those participating in activities critical to transitioning from student to professional (submitting manuscripts, getting published, and receiving review invitations) in comparison to White men. Gender parity for biogeoscientists appears within reach at earlier career stages, with 37% of AGU Biogeosciences members and 41% of Biogeosciences attendees at the Fall Meeting identifying as women in 2020. The demographics of those successfully completing activities required for career advancement, i.e. publishing and reviewing with Journal of Geophysical Research and Global Biogeochemical cycles, two biogeoscience journals, illustrate more progress is needed. A large majority of manuscripts were submitted by men (73%), many of which have no co-authors that identify as women or non-binary geoscientists. Further, our communities’ bias of who we suggest as reviewers, results in 85% of the reviewer invites going to White geoscientists and 63% going to men. Thus, while representation of diverse communities has improved in some areas, barriers to publishing result in authorship not reflective of society: only 25% of accepted manuscripts were led by self-identified geoscientists of color and fewer than 5% were led by women geoscientists of color. It is critical that efforts to diversify move beyond gender, to ensure that scientists of color are also afforded the access and opportunity needed to thrive as biogeoscientists.