I am Debra Bowman. I'm the senior managing editor of clinical publications for the ASGE, and I am going to talk about diversity, equity, and inclusion. Okay, so why look at diversity? Well, many organizations have received a wake up call in the past year or so, realizing that they've really done nothing to help with diversity. But ASGE does have a diversity, equity, and inclusion committee. This was created to ensure that all ASGE committees and boards consider all kinds of diversity when they're filling openings on their committees and boards, and really that just the diversity is considered every day in every possible way. Well, I wanted to bring the same kind of awareness to GIE. It's not a new issue, of course, but it is one that scientific journals are just really starting to look at in a formal way. We're hearing more and more about it every day from organizations that we belong to from other journals, they're starting to say we should be doing something about this. I also wanted to look at this time at the differences among diversity, equity, and inclusion. Think of it like this, an example would be if there were a company that had six positions open, so they hire three women or three ethnic minorities. That is a step toward diversity, but it's not enough to just hire them. The company also has to treat those hired people equally and give them equal chances for advancement, creating an atmosphere where they don't feel excluded. That is the inclusion part of it. Hiring them should never be treated like it's some kind of a test to see whether they can survive the organization. They have to be treated equally and just included in every way. The equity part of it then concerns focusing more on changing the structures and the systems that created all these inequities in the first place. Each part is important. Just because you're fulfilling one part doesn't mean you're handling all three of them. Look at all three parts. How is GIE going to be doing this? Well, authors can now submit a form upon submission of their articles. They upload it along with their disclosure form. They can list information about a broad range of diversity issues that they can share with us and with the entire GIE readership. Now, this is completely optional for authors submitting to GIE. When they submit, they find a form there that they fill out and right away they can opt to click the checkbox that says no, I don't want to participate, or they click the one that says no, I don't want to participate. If they do, then they go ahead and fill out the rest of the form. I really want to emphasize that this does not affect the acceptance or rejection of your article at GIE. So the corresponding author is going to fill out the form, and that person signs the form and indicates that all authors do agree to participate. How do we do this at submission? It's a good question because some journals are asking for this only when an article is accepted. But we feel like once an article is ready to send to the publisher, we don't want to delay it any longer by asking for an additional submission. And after the peer review and everything has gone on, we don't want to say, well, okay, wait a minute, we're ready to accept it, but now we need to do this. We really want to get your accepted articles published online, get them to Elsevier, and have them put them up as quickly as possible. A second reason why we like to do this at submission is this way every author gets the opportunity to see the statements on this form. It's not just if their article is accepted, every submission author gets to see these statements, and we hope that they will start to think about them when they're setting up their next study. When the authors do agree to participate, they're going to answer questions relating to gender balance in the recruitment of human subjects, ethnic or other types of diversity in the recruitment of human subjects, and they're going to tell us how they work to ensure that the language of the study questionnaires reflected inclusion. What else is included on the form? Well, for studies involving non-human subjects or materials, authors can note that they ensured sex balance in the selection of the subjects for the study. We also give them the chance to explain how in their author list, or originally in their researcher list, they considered diversity and attribution regarding gender, LGBTQ+, ethnicity, disabilities, as well as how they considered balance when creating their reference list. That may be something you've never thought of. That's an important part of diversity as well. Also on the form, authors can note that the author list includes contributors from the location where the research was conducted, who participated in the data collection, design, analysis, and or interpretation of the work. This helps to avoid what has become known as helicopter science or parachute science. That's when researchers from wealthier countries will go into a developing country, collect information, and then travel back to their country, analyze the data and samples, and publish the results with little or no involvement of the local researchers where they got the data. That is unethical. The form is published on the accepted article. The corresponding author marks checkboxes on the form. The authors don't write their own statements. So all you have to do is read through the statements and either check the box or leave it unchecked. This benefits the author because filling out the form really doesn't take very much time because the statements are already written out. It benefits us because we can publish the statements that the authors check exactly as we wrote and vetted them. We'll lift them directly from the form and put them in the first page footnote near the disclosure statement on your article. We don't have to worry about what they say because we already know what they say. We've had numerous people approving the wording of the form. We of course had our editors approve it, the editorial board approved it, the chair of the ASGE diversity committee looked at it, I also sent it out to members of our international editorial board and specifically sent it all over the world to different countries, to multiple different countries, and every single person was 100% in favor of it and said this is wonderful, congratulations GIE for doing this. We really encourage this and are happy that you're doing it. So how will we use the data that we gather? Well our main purpose in doing this is just to draw attention to the issue and to get everybody thinking about this when they're setting up their studies. But we will probably look at the data in the future and report on it in future issues of GIE and we hope that participation will go up as readers see other people's statements on their published articles. They'll see them and think, oh we should have done that or we will do that and we will be happy to include the information because it is tastefully submitted. So, so far, we have been really encouraged by how many authors are agreeing to publish their information. Since we started this in April, around 38% of authors of new submissions have agreed to participate if their article is accepted, and any feedback that we've gotten has been really positive. And I really want to congratulate gastroenterologists for this wonderful reception of this idea. I've spoken with managing editors of other journals, and they've said to me, don't be discouraged. It's going to be like pulling teeth, getting them to participate. And that has just not been our experience at all. The gastroenterologists have been wonderful and we, we really appreciate you all. This is a well known statement, you've all heard it, but it means more than just treating patients conditions or diseases. We also want to ensure that our studies harm no one in how we set them up, and in how we report the findings. So GIE is being forward thinking, and is making that happen. If you have any further questions about this diversity, equity, and inclusion initiative, feel free to email me at D Bowman at ASGE.org. Thank you.

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