Rising to the occasion: Publishing diversity-focused scholarship in adult education

Publication of diversity-focused scholarship has increased over the last decade, yet marginalized groups are still inadequately represented in academic journals. In addition, research about diversity has become increasingly complex and its definition varies greatly. This poses obstacles for the emerging scholar interested in submitting diversity-focused scholarship to academic journals. A rarely investigated resource that offers insight into this task are peer reviewer written comments. This study explores the practice of publishing diversity-focused scholarship from a peer-review perspective. A grounded theory approach was used to conduct a content analysis of reviewer comments. From the findings four major categories emerged about the nature of publishing diversity-focused research: (a) clarification of terms; (b) explicit bias by the author; (c) formulaic approach; and (d) reviewers' standpoint. This article offers an understanding about the reviewers' approaches to diversity-focused submissions and suggests considerations when publishing in this area.