Alumni Spotlight: Laker Newhouse '21 Published Research Explores Diversity
Research by KLS Alumnus Published in INFORMS Journal of Service Science
This July, the INFORMS Journal of Service Science published a research paper written by one of our first alumni, Laker Newhouse '21. The paper, titled, "Who Are the Gatekeepers? An Examination of Diversity in INFORMS Journal Editorial Boards," waswritten by Lakerlast summer in collaboration with Stanford University professor Margaret Brandeau.
A description of the published research paper from Laker:
"We wanted to see whether an intellectually non-diverse 'in crowd'dominated the editorial boards of certain scientific journals, which could cause worthy work to be overlooked during the review process.
To do so, I wrote code to gather some 50,000 papers written by members of the editorial boards of 16 journals. We labeled two authors as connected if they had co-authored a paper together. Then, a sign of low diversity is if a journal's editorial board is a giant mess of interconnected authors. more sparse connections may indicate higher diversity. We can draw authors as dots and co-authorship connections as lines between them. We draw the editor-in-chief in red."
Example of amoreintellectually diverse editorial board.
Example of alessintellectually diverse editorial board.
Laker hopes that thisresearch analysis can help to determine diversity efforts of editorial boards, and the recommendations within the published paper provide ideas for increasing diversity in this area in the future.
This fall, Laker will begin his studies at MIT, and we look forward to his continued dedication to inquiry-based thinking and academic research as one of the first students to graduate from Khan Lab School.