Within our society we are quite rightly being challenged to explore how we view, understand and interact in our world. Millions of people worldwide are affected by what is being termed dramatic social change (DSC) (de la Sablonnière, 2017) which is characterised by being rapid, considered to upturn a group's common and normative structure, and involving risk to a group's social distinctiveness (Smith et al., 2019). Rapid societal changes are qualitative transformations within a society that alter the prevailing societal state. Recent events, emanating from deeply entrenched historical practices and cultures (such as ‘Me Too’ and ‘Black Lives matter’) are extreme manifestations of DSC when a group of people feel unheard, ignored, damaged, and excluded from the mainstream social discourse. They do not feel they belong. This is manifesting in a rise of a necessary and rigorous public discussion that is often challenging and confronting, yet imperative if we are to operate in a contemporary, progressive and socially just environment for all. Scholarly publications need to be part of this discourse.

The Australian Occupational Therapy Journal (AOTJ) was first published in 1952 and naturally the content has changed over the past five decades reflecting both scientific and societal standards. The aim of the AOTJ is to be a leader in the dissemination of scholarship and evidence to substantiate, influence and shape policy, systems, and occupational therapy practice locally and globally. Scientific publications such as the AOTJ are not exempt from the impacts of dramatic social change and by necessity need to engage in an ongoing progressive discourse to ensure that policy and practices reflect the prevailing societal and professional standards. All institutions need to be open to robust critique and engage in conversations that will inevitably raise issues associated with colonising practices, racism, ableism, white privilege and gender. This needs to be embraced as it will help acknowledging the richness of the full meaning of societal diversity and translation into authentic outcomes. It is essential that AOTJ uphold a scholarly space to provide intellectual room for diverse thinking and practice that is central for any attempt to transform our societies and to contribute to an equitable, sustainable and healthy future (Vardot, 2020).

Diversity enhances excellence and innovation and the first step to increasing diversity and inclusion is making an ongoing commitment to do so. AOTJ is making a commitment to enable the representation of diversity in all its practices and publications. Truly embracing diversity is challenging as it needs to encompass many facets including background, age, gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, culture, religion, geography, disability, socio-economic status, area of expertise, level of experience, thinking style, lived experiences and skill set (Swartz et al., 2019). Other journal boards have commenced publishing diversity policies with the main foci being gender equity, sexuality and cultural inclusiveness. It has become necessary for a new era of honesty, courage and to call out past and current practices that have not necessarily supported diversity. Within this context there are many references to working towards eliminating implicit or inherent bias in editorial processes.

It is important that AOTJ is open to exploring what are the actual and potential inherent biases that have or may continue to impact on the willingness of people to submit manuscripts and the subsequent acceptance of publications. This may range from and is not limited to views about the quality of practice from international locations, understandings about methodologies embedded within cultural contexts, research on minority groups, and avoidance of controversy. Many journals approach this by ensuring a diversity of reviewers in relationship to the context of the research.

However, is diversity alone enough? Verna Myers said ‘Diversity is being asked to the party. Inclusion is being asked to dance’. Is it time that scientific publications start to fully explore the mantra of the disability movement—‘Nothing about us without us’. If so, it requires journals to explore who is ‘us’. ‘Us’ is often not whom journals have historically engaged with when exploring the quality and inclusion of manuscripts. ‘Us’ may also proffer a range of views that might not sit comfortably with conventional thinking and perhaps current inherent biases. Alongside the need to increase diversity is the associated demand that the appropriate inclusion of a consumer voice in decisions is explored. This has been described at the democratisation of consumption with rise of the ‘voicesumer’ (Umit Kucuk, 2020). Is the publication of scientific research immune from this trend? How does this challenge our traditional concepts of what peer review means? How do we truly include diversity into our practices if we are to include people on whom the research has been conducted and hear their voice in the process? This especially needs to be applied where peoples voice have not necessary been fully heard and their diversity not fully reflected in the process of publication, such as people with disabilities, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

Journals can commit to principles and practices that work towards building inclusivity. At a minimum this should include the intentional recruitment of diversity amongst peer reviewers, providing clear guidelines on peer review supporting ethical and fair research, ensure careful selection of peer reviewers for manuscripts authored by specific groups, ensure criticism is constructive, relevant to the academic issues under review and not biased by personalised comments or judgements, and be aware of how unconscious bias can have a negative impact on any scholar and be prepared to be challenged. Moving forward it is calling for something far greater as scholarly publications respond to dramatic social change.

Fundamentally, this is calling to the foundations of Occupational Therapy practice of doing, being and becoming (Wilcock, 1998), and also perhaps much more about the transformation of belonging (Hitch et al., 2014).

Angus Buchanan developed the idea and is the sole author of the Editorial.