Nature Portfolio authors explain the benefits of DEI to their research

Author: Christabell Ndive

The previous post in this series saw Nature Portfolio authors reveal the hard work, challenges, and immense efforts that go into their published research, much of which occurs behind the scenes. All four of our authors spoke about the power of collaborative teamwork. Now, in this blog post, we dig deeper into the topic, exploring how diversity of thought and inclusivity can help produce meaningful, robust, and impactful scientific research.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion are important in every facet of life, and research is no exception. Asking questions and finding answers lies at the heart of scientific endeavour. Research teams whose members have a range of backgrounds, areas of expertise, and experiences tend to push the boundaries of inquiry — raising different questions and finding creative and innovative ways to answer them. Providing impactful solutions to urgent global problems requires inquisitive thinking and collaborative teamwork. These points were widely supported by all the Nature Portfolio authors who contributed to this discussion.

Our first researcher, Anindita Roy, Professor of Paediatric Haematology at the University of Oxford, described how having a diverse team brought different perspectives to her research, leading to some ground-breaking results. Valuing diversity also helped Roy when recruiting, allowing her to find the very best people for her work rather than focusing on a small cohort of specialized researchers. 

Roy’s paper, “A human fetal liver-derived infant MLL-AF4 acute lymphoblastic leukemia model reveals a distinct fetal gene expression program”, which was published in Nature Communications in 2021, named 20 leaders in their respective fields as co-authors. These researchers hailed from universities and children’s hospitals throughout England and Scotland; Roy credits the diversity in her team, in background, age, gender, and culture, as a driver of better and more innovative research.

Valuing diversity in all its forms

Our second researcher, Abdel Abdellaoui, Geneticist at Amsterdam UMC (University Medical Center) in the Department of Psychiatry, said that he valued diversity in his team in every form — including gender, culture, academic background, and skillsets — as “it makes for richer discussions”. In particular, he cited the inclusion of colleagues with diverse academic specialties as being invaluable to his research, as “genetics is an inherently interdisciplinary field”, and individuals with backgrounds in different areas can have very different ways of looking at a problem.

Abdellaoui’s study, “Genetic correlates of social stratification in Great Britain”, which appeared in Nature Human Behaviour in 2019, illustrates just how effective a diverse team can be in producing impactful research. The study was co-authored by colleagues from the Universities of East Anglia and Exeter in the UK, the University of Queensland in Australia, and the VU University and University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. The diverse academic backgrounds of these co-workers spanned the fields of psychiatry, psychology, molecular bioscience, and genetics.

Multigenerational teamwork

Our third researcher, William Colgan, Senior Researcher, at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, spoke about the importance of age diversity within his research team, which is an asset that might sometimes be underrated. He described how older team members can bring a wealth of experience to the table, while younger co-workers can have a great appetite for learning and embracing new technologies, such as artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT. Colgan also spoke about the value of his research team having gender parity, which remains rare in the geosciences.

Colgan previously cited “Mass balance of the Greenland Ice Sheet from 1992 to 2018”, which appeared in Nature in 2019, as one of his most impactful studies. This paper was an exercise in diversity-of-thought by members of the Ice Sheet Mass Balance Inter-comparison Exercise (IMBIE) team. The co-authors listed for the article were drawn from 50 different institutions located in countries across the globe in East Asia, Europe, North America, and South America, offering a wealth of diversity in experience, expertise, and perspective.

The power of equality

Our fourth researcher, Ginestra Bianconi, Professor, at Queen Mary University of London, has noticed a real shift in her team’s make-up over the years, and has great respect for the power of diversity. As well as advantages for the quality of the research itself, she described how diversity positively impacts the workplace culture and team dynamics when “there are no minorities and everybody can feel completely at home”. This makes for a comfortable environment in which everyone is a valued member of the team, and co-workers have a shared aspiration to produce the best results possible.

Bianconi’s influential paper, “The dynamic nature of percolation on networks with triadic interactions”, which appeared in Nature Communications in 2023, resulted from an international collaboration between researchers at various different career stages from institutions located in the UK, US, and Germany, demonstrating the benefits of diverse and inclusive teamwork.

Watch our authors describe the important effects that diverse teamwork has had on the research they have published in Nature Portfolio:

This series of blog posts aims to give insights into the work of the authors of some of the most impactful and important studies published in Nature Portfolio over the last few years.

The researchers interviewed told us about the impact of their most memorable studies, many of which have received hundreds of citations, demonstrating the breadth of their influence. They spoke about the effort, collaboration, and teamwork that went into their published work, much of which remained unseen by the reader. And they elaborated on the importance of collaboration and the invaluable impact that diverse and inclusive teamwork can have on scientific exploration — a belief that is shared by Nature Portfolio. Their hard work and meticulous team efforts have produced papers that deserve to be seen by a wide audience and to reach as many influential people as possible.

At Nature Portfolio, we are proud to support these researchers by providing a reputable and trustworthy platform that has a strong track record of making waves in the scientific community and beyond.

Nature Portfolio offers a wide range of global publishing channels, with space for in-depth and complex thinking. We make publishing research on a proven platform as easy as possible, offering best-in-class editorial teams who ensure important ideas are communicated with clarity, accuracy, and impact. Learn more about how we support researchers at every stage and how you can publish in one of our journals.