LAUSR

We are living through transformational times. Persistent structural injustices are currently being called out in every part of academia – especially, but not exclusively, with regard to gender and race (Andoh, 2021; Buchanan & Wiklund, 2020). In wider society, discussion about the rights of minority groups forms a prominent strand of socio-political discourse. At the same time, increasing understanding of the concept of intersectionality is drawing attention to the unique experiences of those with multiple marginalised identities (Crenshaw, 1990). All of this is acutely pertinent to autism research. Our field is not immune to the problems associated with under-representation of specific groups in academia. Furthermore, the autistic and autism communities that we aim to serve are subject to discrimination and barriers to inclusion in decision-making fora (Fletcher-Watson et al., 2021). Not only do autistic people in general tend to be underserved by formal systems, but those who are from marginalised racial and ethnic groups are particularly underserved (Mandell et al., 2009; Travers & Krezmien, 2018). Autistic people are also more likely to identify as non-heterosexual and outside the gender binary (George & Stokes, 2018) and to experience co-occurring mental health problems or physical disability (Baeza-Velasco et al., 2018; Hossain et al., 2020) making them subject to intersectional pressures. All of this begs the question: how can we, as a journal, play our part in dismantling structural inequalities, and promoting better representation of marginalised groups? In a ‘publish or perish’ culture that also values evidence-based practice, we are an influential part of the system that is currently failing many sectors of society. Despite pushback against publishing metrics like h-index and impact factor (Moher et al., 2018), a strong track record of peer-reviewed journal articles is pivotal to research career success across many countries – perhaps second only to grant income. In this sense, publishers and funders wield a significant amount of power in the autism research community. One way to make a positive contribution to socio-political change might be to consider the focus of research that gets published. We already know that the balance of funding distribution does not align with community priorities (Cervantes et al., 2020; den Houting & Pellicano, 2019; Harris et al., 2021; E. Pellicano et al., 2014). There has been relatively little scrutiny of whether research publishing is similarly out of step, but evidence suggests that funding and publication topics are closely aligned (L. Pellicano et al., 2013). However, shaping the content of research is only one possible way to think about using our influence positively. How research is done may matter to people even more than the topic of that research (Fletcher-Watson et al., 2019). Indeed, influencing the research culture and process, rather than its disciplinary affiliation, could be more relevant to the structural inequalities that are motivating us to make changes. In this editorial, we lay out three ways in which we aim to use our position to promote a positive culture in autism research.