Addressing race and racism in editorial policy

Comedian Bill Maher has a segment on his show that always intrigues me: “I don't know it for a fact…I just know it's true.” For example, one of his recent lines: “I don't know it for a fact that the chef accidentally burned the chicken and then served it as ‘blackened chicken’—I just know it's true!” My version for this article is “I don't know it for a fact that the articles published in my journal (Advances in Nursing Science) influence how people think…I just know it's true!” Indeed, this is one of the unspoken ideas that I believe has a major influence in what is published in scholarly literature. It might be a pipe dream on the part of editors and publishers, but the fact remains that we select content for publication in large part because we believe that what we publish will influence our readers—we just know it's true!

Read more here ...