Research inequity in the plant sciences

Do all plant biologists worldwide have equal access to novel methods, enabling them to be equally productive, publish, and receive credit for their research? Or does reduced access to cutting‐edge techniques in countries with lower financial resources create an inequity for researchers located there? Such disparities and biases do exist within our discipline and must be addressed if we are to move forward as a more just society. Applications in Plant Sciences has taken steps to address this important issue of research inequity, as outlined below. We now call upon the entire botanical community—researchers, editors and reviewers, funding agencies, and publishers—to work together toward a more equitable environment for all researchers around the world.

: Do all plant biologists worldwide have equal access to novel methods, enabling them to be equally productive, publish, and receive credit for their research? Or does reduced access to cutting-edge techniques in countries with lower financial resources create an inequity for researchers located there? Such disparities and biases do exist within our discipline and must be addressed if we are to move forward as a more just society. Applications in Plant Sciences has taken steps to address this important issue of research inequity, as outlined below. We now call upon the entire botanical community-researchers, editors and reviewers, funding agencies, and publishers-to work together toward a more equitable environment for all researchers around the world. means who are using methods perceived by others as outdated may find themselves unable to publish their work in higherprofile journals; this is especially problematic when publication in international journals may be key to their career advancement. Reduced opportunities to publish may occur on top of language difficulties that complicate the issue even further (Huttner-Koros, 2015;Woolston and Osório, 2019;Pérez Ortega, 2020), particularly if some reviewers and editors discriminate against researchers from primarily non-English speaking countries (e.g., Romero-Olivares, 2019; Ramírez-Castañeda, 2020). Thus, papers with "older" methods may be more likely to appear in regional journals, often in a non-English language and not indexed in databases such as the Web of Science, and therefore not be readily accessible to other scientists globally (Amano et al., 2016). The irony is that many researchers are located in botanically rich but economically challenged countries within the tropics-where botanical knowledge may be limited relative to other locations (Amano and Sutherland, 2013;Reboredo Segovia et al., 2020). Thus, their contributions may be incredibly valuable, especially if a given species in that tropical locality has never before been examined. The end result is geographic-based disparity, driven in part by unequal access to new methods and culminating in some researchers being unable to publish their work in international journals because their methods are viewed as antiquated, even though the rest of the content may be valuable to a global audience. In the end, the entire community loses out.
What can be done to erase this inequity? One approach is to promote greater collaboration between more financially privileged researchers and those investigators lacking resources necessary to carry out the research, but who have deep knowledge of the plant species themselves. There are situations where this arrangement has certainly worked well, but it comes with a potential danger of a perceived imbalance in the relationship. Specifically, it is critical that researchers in less affluent countries be adequately recognized for their work as full partners and coauthors on papers, rather than being used simply for access to the study species and only mentioned in the acknowledgements-known as "parachute science" (De Vos, 2020; Stefanoudis et al., 2020). Authorship should acknowledge the contribution of all individuals without whom the study could not have been completed (Gunturiz Albarracín et al., 2020). This can be easily achieved using the Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT; https://casrai.org/credi t/) to indicate roles played by each contributor to a scientific paper.
An arguably better approach, but much more difficult to achieve, is to work together as a profession to (1) recognize the value of international researchers and their contributions, and (2) empower all plant biologists, regardless of their geographic location, country, and/or socioeconomic status, with equal access to methods that result in publishable papers. For example, scientists in the United States and other privileged countries should make every effort to cite articles by international researchers, invite them to give departmental seminars, and recruit their students into graduate programs and as postdoctoral researchers (and provide continuing support if they then choose to return to their country of origin). Furthermore, many universities and research institutions in tropical countries desperately need access to new technology, given the scarcity of scientific funding in their home country. Collaborating, more privileged researchers should include colleagues in these countries on grant proposals to facilitate research at that site. However, this requires that federal funding agencies allow the transfer of a portion of allocated funds to other countries. At the very least, large funding agencies should encourage the inclusion of local researchers and field guides if research is conducted abroad, with funding allowed for that expense. In addition, alternative methodological solutions could also be pursued that are not as costly, such as those outlined in a special issue of Applications in Plant Sciences in April 2020 (Dean et al., 2020).
There are also steps that can be taken within the publication process. Reviewers should think about their own implicit biases and how that might affect their reviews, especially involving authors who do not have English as a first language (Romero-Olivares, 2019); for example, reviewers may need to focus more on the scientific content rather than on the grammar (Pérez Ortega, 2020). There can also be bias during peer review when authors have Latin-or Asian-sounding names (even though English might be their original language), a situation circumvented by a double-blinded peer-review process. Furthermore, journal editors must recognize the consequences of implicit bias and think critically about how to address it. Rather than focusing exclusively on the novelty of methods in submissions, they should also consider each paper more holistically in terms of what is known about the particular species. For example, a paper reporting levels of genetic variation in a tropical species may use older methods, such as RAPD markers, but it could also be the first such study ever in that species. Therefore, despite lacking methodological novelty, the study could have value to the broader research community based on the new knowledge that it has generated. Unfortunately, journals may not be willing to embrace this approach due to their dependence on journal impact factor rankings (but see Berenbaum, 2019); however, this could change with development of other models that shift importance from journals to individual articles or researchers, such as the h-index. Finally, publishers must think critically about how the fees they charge can impair access and prevent international researchers from contributing equally to their journals. Resources such as Research4Life (https://www.resea rch4l ife.org) are also being developed to provide access to journals and to defray article publication charges for authors from eligible institutions and countries. Taken all together, these are the first steps needed to develop global equity in the plant sciences.

What is APPS doing to address this disparity?
Applications in Plant Sciences (APPS) began in 2013 as a publication outlet for all authors throughout the plant sciences and has continued in this tradition to publish novel tools and methods. The journal is committed to publishing all types of methods (regardless of cost) provided that the method itself or the application is original. Over the past few years, the editors and staff have been carefully considering how to more effectively engage researchers from all over the world, as demonstrated in the following ways: • Encourage submissions from all countries: Over the past year, submissions were received from the United States, China, Australia, and France but also from 19 other countries, including Pakistan, Mexico, Nigeria, Peru, and Kenya. We are now reviewing our author guidelines to ensure they are clear for authors for whom English is not their first language. • Reaching out to international authors: Through our partnership with Wiley, we are expanding our efforts to reach out to authors through workshops in other countries, such as at the Congreso Latinoamericano de Botánica in Quito, Ecuador, in 2018, and the Congreso Mexicano de Botánica in Aguascalientes, Mexico, in 2019. We also offer waivers and discounts (https://autho rserv ices.wiley.com/open-resea rch/open-acces s/for-autho rs/ waive rs-and-disco unts.html) on publication charges for authors from low-and middle-income countries. • Recruiting international reviewers: Over the past three years, we have depended on the expertise of reviewers from 50 counties. While most reviewers have originated from the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, and China, researchers from countries such as Ecuador, Costa Rica, Vietnam, and Tunisia have also contributed their expertise as reviewers. • Open access papers: All readers with internet access can readily access for free all articles in the journal as soon as they are published, as the journal is open access with articles available in HTML format and downloadable as PDF files. • Diversifying our editorial board to represent our global audience: We have purposely expanded our Editorial Board and our Reviewing Editor Board to reflect the countries of origin, race/ ethnicity, and gender of our authors and readers. Our editorial boards now represent 12 countries in addition to the United States: Argentina, Brazil, China, Germany, India, Italy, Korea, Mexico, Spain, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, and Venezuela. • Personalized review process with a sensitivity to international authors with English as an additional language: All new submissions are quickly screened to ensure first that the scientific content is appropriate for the journal, and then that the English is of sufficient quality to facilitate review. Editors also work constructively with all authors throughout the review process and ultimately the production process to ensure that the scientific content of each paper is easily understandable by all readers. • Emphasis on low-cost methods: A special issue published in April 2020 titled "Conducting Botanical Research with Limited Resources: Low-Cost Methods in the Plant Sciences" included 12 articles presenting effective methods that can be used by any researcher. Due to the high level of interest in this subject, a follow-up special issue on the same topic is currently in the early planning stages.
Many plant biologists strive to become effective and productive researchers, developing solutions to complex problems or questions, contributing to past discoveries, and inspiring generations to come. One common misconception is that anyone can succeed if they have a strong work ethic, patience and determination, technical ability, and intellectual prowess. The reality is far from this, given that accessibility to resources is also a key component as demonstrated here. If we are to progress as a discipline, we will need the contributions of all researchers, regardless of where they are located around the globe. This requires that our profession reflect upon whether we are truly the equitable society we strive to be and work to build a more inclusive profession.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This editorial is based on an ongoing project conducted by members of the Culley Laboratory, with assistance by J. Lee, E. Edgerton, and A. Koshoffer of the Digital Scholarship Center at the University of Cincinnati. It is also part of a larger project into publication bias conducted with B. Merritt, M. Philpott, J. Barreiro Sanchez, R. Tunison, E. Tepe, and M. Torres. This manuscript benefited from comments from E. Ávila-Lovera, A. McPherson, B. Parada, and C. Siniscalchi.