Spurring and Siloing: Identity Navigation in Scientific Writing Among Asian Early-Career Researchers

Devon Goss, Shaila Sachdev, Grace Kim, LaTonia Taliaferro-Smith, Meena Balgopal, Sarah C. Fankhauser

Posted on: 9 July 2025

Preprint posted on 3 June 2025

Does one leave racial identity at the door when communicating science? Can it coexist with scientific ‘objectivity’?

Selected by Jeny Jose

Categories: scientific communication and education

Why this preprint

Scientific writing is often framed as a neutral, objective endeavour. Yet, for early-career researchers, particularly those from historically marginalised backgrounds, the process of writing and publishing scientific work can become a site of personal negotiation. This preprint shines a light on how Asian and Asian American early-career scientists navigate the interplay between racial identity and scientific norms, offering rare qualitative insight into a topic too often overlooked in STEM discourse.

What the study explores

Through interviews with 23 participants who engaged with the Journal of Emerging Investigators, an unusual journal that invites high school students to contribute original research and receive developmental feedback from advanced scientists, the authors identify two recurring strategies that early-career scientists use to reconcile their identities with disciplinary expectations. Because the journal simulates professional peer review while remaining pedagogically supportive, it offers a distinctive setting for observing how scientists begin negotiating identity in relation to academic norms. The identified approaches are:

Spurring – Participants’ cultural and racial identities actively inform their scientific curiosity, influencing the research questions they pursue.
Siloing – In contrast, some participants intentionally compartmentalise these aspects of identity to conform to perceived expectations of objectivity in scientific communication.

Key Results

Spurring: Nearly 40% of participants (9 out of 23 participants) reported that their racial backgrounds inspired their choice of research topics and initial curiosity. An additional 13% (3 participants) expressed that racial identity influenced how they approached research or analysis, even if not at the level of selecting the topic.

For example, traditional medicine or environmental issues tied to their Asian communities became the foundation for their scientific questions. Participants described this as a bridge connecting cultural knowledge with academic investigation, allowing them to remain scientifically credible while honouring their identities.

Siloing: However, 26.1% (6 participants) stated they had never considered their racial identity as relevant to the scientific writing process at all. Over 70% emphasised that disciplinary norms, especially in biological sciences, demand separating personal identity from scientific output to avoid perceived bias. Many described scientific writing as a space where identity should remain invisible, maintaining an image of objectivity and neutrality.

This duality forms the heart of the study. The findings offer valuable insight into how cultural capital is mobilised or withheld in scientific spaces, highlighting the tensions between personal identity and institutional expectations.

Key Insights

Cultural wealth as resource Drawing from frameworks like cultural community wealth and narrative identity, the study highlights how familial and cultural capital often inspire scientific thinking, an asset that remains undervalued in traditional training.
Model minority tensions Participants navigate a unique position within the “model minority” stereotype: simultaneously rendered hyper-visible and invisible, expected to excel but often discouraged from expressing cultural specificity.
Disciplinary compartmentalisation Even when cultural background inspires research ideas, formal writing often erases that influence due to norms around detached, “objective” tone in scientific discourse.

Why it matters

This work by the authors complicates the dominant narrative of objectivity in science. It shows that the push for neutrality can inadvertently silence the lived experiences and cultural assets that enrich scientific inquiry. For students and educators alike, the study advocates recognising identity not as a bias to be removed, but as a valid lens that can enhance innovation and engagement in STEM.

Broader implications

This preprint has strong resonance for equity-focused science education. It calls for reimagining training environments that validate personal narratives and offer models of identity integration, rather than reinforcing the false binary between the “scientific” and the “personal.” Importantly, it invites institutions to reflect on how implicit expectations shape who feels included and how.

Asian and Asian American early-career scientists aren’t passive actors in the scientific system. They are making deliberate, thoughtful choices about how to show up as both researchers and individuals. Spurring and Siloing offers a compelling framework for understanding identity navigation in science and a critical step toward more inclusive research cultures.

doi: https://doi.org/10.1242/prelights.40964

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Author's response

Dr. Sarah C. Fankhauser shared

Were there any patterns in who chose to participate (e.g., more from high-ranking schools or certain STEM subfields)?

Answer: Our research didn’t find a bias toward any particular schools or subfields, but we were surprised that the respondents who participated were all identified as Asian and Asian American. Initially, we wanted to talk to a wide variety of student authors with different racial identities, especially those that have been historically marginalized in scientific writing, like Black and Latino student authors. However, when we began to notice that a large portion of our study was Asian and Asian American and that their identity had shaped how they approached their scientific writing, we were excited to explore that specific racial identity. While this focus yielded valuable insights about Asian and Asian American experiences in STEM writing, our participant demographics also unfortunately reflect broader disparities in STEM participation and representation.

This study has primarily focused on researchers from the biological sciences. Do you think students in non-biological sciences might show different dynamics around identity expression in writing?

Answer: We love this question and would love to study it! What we found is that students were able to incorporate some cultural background into their biological research but felt that communicating their research had to follow the norms and objectivity of the discipline. I think other scientific fields, outside of the biological sciences, have similar structures and uniformity and so we would hypothesize that students would have a similar approach of uniformity. Through our study, we realized the vast cultural wealth that student authors could have brought to their writing but chose not to, and although not the focus of our research, we would advocate for greater flexibility around the norms of scientific communication.

Some participants initially dismissed the role of race in their writing, but changed their views upon reflection. How do you interpret that shift? Is it a result of the interview itself?

Answer: It was really interesting that early in the interviews that almost all participants were dismissive of the role of race or cultural background, so we did have to gently probe to see if it just wasn’t top of their mind or if they truly didn’t think there was a connection. This is where the siloing came to light, that the participants who did reflect on the role of race tended to do so in the context of their experimentation part of the research process, not the writing. It really reinforces the objectivity myth that there has to be the appearance of objectivity in research.

What recommendations would you make to educators or mentors to better support early-career scientists who want to incorporate personal identity into their research?

Answer: I think we need to make it clear that science comes from scientists…we’re people with experiences from our culture, our upbringing, our family structures. These experiences influence how we can think and look at the world in creative ways. My advice to educators and mentors is to first have explicit conversations in overarching/meta questions around what it means to be a researcher. There is so much in research that is left implicit and unsaid, why not just bring some of this to light (side note, we have a recently published paper that shows that mentors generally take a hands-off approach in the communication piece of research. See Minocha et al 2025)? As mentors we can make it clear that personal experiences and backgrounds serve as a strength to draw from. We can start research projects with mentees by asking simple questions about what they know about the question or topic, if there is something from their background that may inform the research direction.

As someone who identifies with this international shift, I’m curious whether the timing of one’s cultural integration into a new scientific environment makes a difference. For instance, even if someone is still considered an early-career scientist, having spent a significant amount of time in a foreign academic setting might make them a product of two cultures. Did your study observe any patterns or reflections from participants who had long-term exposure to multiple cultural contexts, and if so, how did that shape their approach to integrating identity into their scientific writing?

Answer: One thing that stood out to us was how multi-cultural respondents discussed the benefits and difficulties with approaching scientific writing with English as a second language. Students found ideas sparked by concepts or ideas that were rooted in the non-white culture that they identified with, but also found that it was sometimes difficult to translate those ideas into language that was accepted by the mainstream English academic community, especially when equivalent words or concepts did not exist in English.