Peer Reviewing: Cultivating an Equitable and Inclusive Scholarly Community

This workshop aims to help individuals expand their engagement with the computer science education research community as inclusive and equitable peer reviewers. Peer reviewers are liaisons between a journal or funding organization and members of their professional community, and thus are crucial for incorporating equity as part of the culture of computer science and engineering education. Prior research has shown that being a peer reviewer has benefits for the reviewer as well as the journal. Peer reviewing journal articles and proposals is a good way to stay current with what is happening in the field and acquire insights that can improve one's own writing and research. Peer reviewing is also a way to promote equity in our community through inclusive practices. Inclusive reviewing practices provide respectful, constructive feedback to authors on aspects of their manuscripts and proposals such as bias-free language, treatment of vulnerable populations, and positionality of authors and reviewers. This workshop (supported by NSF grants EEC-2037807, 2037788, and 2037797) prompts participants to consider their own positionality as reviewers and scholars. From this perspective, they then consider important aspects of an article or proposal such as whether underserved communities are impacted by the work, if participant identities are referred to appropriately, if authors of color working in this space are being cited appropriately, and if authors are being accountable to do the challenging work of addressing issues related to diversity and equity.