Indigenous cultural identity of research authors standard: Research and reconciliation with Indigenous peoples in rural health journals

In health research publication, it is difficult to distinguish authors who self-identify as Indigenous peoples, for example, as First Nations, Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander, Māori, Pacifica, American Indian, Alaskan Native, Métis, Inuit or as any of the 370 million Indigenous peoples worldwide.[1] Their invisibility is partly due to the lack of attribution in the publications; for instance, the author list - with first and last names only - restricts the conveyance of identity. Our goal as an academic community should be to expand the inclusiveness of research governance to include publication governance. Editorial rules stipulate the publication of ethics approvals, statements of interest, organisational affiliations, declaration of funding sources and author contributions to the articles, but what about Indigenous cultural identity? The issue of author identity is especially relevant for rural and remote health journals because Indigenous peoples living in rural and remote health locations experience health inequities linked to racism and cultural suppression. We, the editorial teams of the Canadian Journal of Rural Medicine (CJRM), Australian Journal of Rural Health (AJRH) and the Rural and Remote Health (RRH), are changing our editorial rules so that research published about Indigenous peoples includes Indigenous peoples as authors, or evidence is provided of Indigenous peoples' genuine engagement in all the stages of the research process, including crafting the manuscript.[2,3,4] Our next step is to propose the development of an Indigenous Cultural Identity of Research Authors Standard (ICIRAS, pronounced 'I-keye-ras', short 'I' sound in Indigenous, hard 'k' sound for Culture and long 'eye' sound in Identity)