Assessment of diversity-based approaches used by American Universities to increase recruitment and retention of biomedical sciences faculty members: a scoping review protocol

Considering the recent increased interest in diversifying the biomedical faculty workforce, a thorough assessment of the existing approaches is needed to provide guidance to universities. Hence this scoping review will be guided by the following research question, “What are the diversity-based approaches used by American Universities to increase recruitment and retention of biomedical sciences faculty members?”. The review follows the Population-Concept-Context methodology for Joanna Briggs Institution Scoping Reviews. Relevant peer-reviewed studies conducted during the last 10 years will be identified from electronic databases including Scopus, PubMed, and Embase. The search strings using keywords such as “biomedical faculty/researcher,” “hiring/retention,” and “diversity/minority/underrepresented” will be conducted using Boolean logic. Two independent reviewers will conduct all title and abstract screening, followed by a full article screening and data extraction. Due to the possible heterogeneity of the studies, we hope to use either a narrative analysis and/or descriptive figures/tables to depict the results. The review will present various diversity programs that have been implemented and evaluated in American Universities to increase the recruitment and retention of biomedical sciences faculty.