address gender ratio in the author list

[cdquinto]

Hello, I created this google doc so we can brainstorm/work on the text addressing this issue @agladstein @gtsambos

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NhGhWTCp1A_iLXamPnDLtICDop9puZ6oHqfJdprt5KI/edit?usp=sharing

[jeromekelleher]

Thanks @cdquinto!

[cdquinto]

This is my proposal for the text addressing the gender ratio to be included either at the beginning or at the end of the Development Section:

It is important to acknowledge that the field of population genetics, especially in the development of methods, has had an unequal representation of women and men, and the paper's authors reflect this state of the field as there are more men authors with affiliations in the USA and Europe primarily in this work. We know the importance of creating and strengthening networks to successfully attract and include women in open-source communities and we hope that the msprime project will continue to be an opportunity for inclusion.

I am not sure if this is what @gtsambos had in mind.

[petrelharp]

Love it - I've done a rewrite of this (also on the google doc) that I think keeps the same content - edits/comments appreciated.

We think it is important to note that the author list of this paper is highly skewed towards men and towards those affiliations in the USA and Europe. Without minimizing the historical contributions of researchers not in these categories, we think it's also important to note that this reflects the demographics of methods developers in population genetics. We know the importance of creating and strengthening networks to successfully attract and include women in open-source communities and we hope that the msprime project will continue to be an inclusive and supportive collaborative environment that helps to address these inequalities.

[jeromekelleher]

I really like it as well, thanks for taking the lead on this @cdquinto.

We know the importance of creating and strengthening networks to successfully attract and include women in open-source communities and we hope that the msprime project will continue to be an opportunity for inclusion.

I worry that this sentence makes it seem like we think we've done a good job on recruiting women into the project when in truth we --- I --- haven't. It's very much been a random process, and there was no particular effort at positive outreach. I think it would be better if we could commit to doing something positive, ideally I guess propose outreachy internships or something similar. However, we would need to apply for funding from Wellcome in order to do this (which would certainly take some months) and I don't think we want to delay the paper that long.

So, from a high level I think it would be good to (a) acknowledge the problem, and that it's (I hope) largely due to demographics of the field; (b) say that we want to do better and are taking concrete positive steps to encourage diversity within our community.

[cdquinto]

Maybe something like this:

It is important to acknowledge that the field of population genetics, especially in the development of methods, has had an unequal representation of women and men, and the paper's authors reflect this state of the field as there are more men authors with affiliations in the USA and Europe primarily in this work. We know the importance of creating and strengthening networks to successfully attract and include women in open-source communities and the msprime project is committed to fostering a diverse, inclusive, and supportive collaborative environment that helps to address these inequalities in our field.

El jue, 9 sept 2021 a las 13:36, Jerome Kelleher @.***>) escribió:

I really like it as well, thanks for taking the lead on this @cdquinto https://github.com/cdquinto.

We know the importance of creating and strengthening networks to successfully attract and include women in open-source communities and we hope that the msprime project will continue to be an opportunity for inclusion.

I worry that this sentence makes it seem like we think we've done a good job on recruiting women into the project when in truth we --- I --- haven't. It's very much been a random process, and there was no particular effort at positive outreach. I think it would be better if we could commit to doing something positive, ideally I guess propose outreachy https://www.outreachy.org internships or something similar. However, we would need to apply for funding from Wellcome https://www.outreachy.org/docs/community/#wellcome-trust-funding in order to do this (which would certainly take some months) and I don't think we want to delay the paper that long.

So, from a high level I think it would be good to (a) acknowledge the problem, and that it's (I hope) largely due to demographics of the field; (b) say that we want to do better and are taking concrete positive steps to encourage diversity within our community.

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[gtsambos]

Thanks so much for this @cdquinto @petrelharp, especially @cdquinto for getting it started! I will add to this after my meetings today, but I really like what you have so far. I think I'll add some text in about things we care about in the msprime/tskit community that aren't explicitly done to recruit more under-represented groups in particular, but that make the project more accessible in general. Many of these have been mentioned in other parts of the paper anyway: documentation, recognition of diverse types of contributions, a collaboration model that allow 'globally distributed' members to participate, clear and publicly visible technical conversations and todos

[gtsambos]

I think I'd reword this sentence somehow, perhaps to make it a little closer to @cdquinto's original wording:

Without minimizing the historical contributions of researchers not in these categories, we think it's also important to note that this reflects the demographics of methods developers in population genetics.

It's quite possibly true, but (a) it sounds like a bit of an excuse, (b) in the absence of some citation/poll to back it up, it's a bit of a judgment call on our part, and in any case, (c) it would be better to say something like "anyone can get into methods development" rather than implying that we are sampling from a fixed set of existing people who are already in the know. I think (c) is something we generally do really well, especially from you @petrelharp and @jeromekelleher! I think many readers will already know that representation in some areas of science is bad, and if we want to be approachable to these underrepresented types of developers, it'd be better to drop any comparison to this poor average

[petrelharp]

It's quite possibly true, but (a) it sounds like a bit of an excuse,

Heh - I was rewriting that bit to try to make it sound less like an excuse, but @agladstein made the same comment over in the google doc. Ah, I see - we want to be saying "this is also a bigger problem in popgen methods" not saying "we're just this way because of the popgen community".

[petrelharp]

I like @cdquinto's most recent draft - the only edit I'm wanting to make is to try to break up that first long sentence. How about:

It is important to acknowledge that the field of population genetics, especially the subfield of methods development, has had an unequal representation of genders and geographic origins. Similarly, paper's author list has more men and authors with affiliations in the USA and Europe. We know the importance of creating and strengthening networks to successfully attract and include women in open-source communities and the msprime project is committed to fostering a diverse, inclusive, and supportive collaborative environment that helps to address these inequalities in our field.

My only other question is whether to say "the msprime project" or "the tskit community" or "the tskit project" (or something else)?

[gtsambos]

btw, I'm gonna keep an eye on the google doc and copy over the most recent proposals into the overleaf document, so we can see how it all fits together

[gtsambos]

My only other question is whether to say "the msprime project" or "the tskit community" or "the tskit project" (or something else)?

What about good old "we"?

[jeromekelleher]

I think Georgia's proposal 6 on the google doc is very close. Here's my slightly tweaked version:

A important overall goal of the msprime development model is to maximise accessibility for prospective users and contributors. However, it is important to acknowledge that under-representation persists in population genetics, especially in methodology and open-source software development. The authorship of our paper reflects this with a skew towards men and affiliations in the USA and Europe. We know the importance of creating and strengthening networks to develop and maintain a diverse community of contributors, and we are committed to fostering a supportive collaborative environment that helps to address these inequalities in our field.

There are probably some citations we can include that look at the representation in open source?

[gtsambos]

I read this earlier today, it quantifies the problem and also gave me some helpful big picture perspective on how OSS projects are structured/managed in general. (As an aside, it's quite likely that msprime and stdpopsim are data points in here, as our project is on Github and satisfies all the listed inclusion criteria afaik)

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2105.08777.pdf

[petrelharp]

LGTM!

[jeromekelleher]

OK, how about I make a PR with the change and we can all sign off on it?

[agladstein]

Good work!