Increased racial and ethnic diversity in population neuroscience research is widely understood to facilitate better identification of subgroup effects and more generalizable findings. Consistency in reporting race and ethnicity population descriptor variables would allow the research community to better assess progress toward more representative datasets. One important lever for ensuring robust and consistent reporting of population descriptors are journal guidelines, and this review of current guidelines finds that there are opportunities for neuroscience journals to strengthen scientific rigor by more clearly delineating expectations with respect to reporting and operationalizing race and ethnicity population descriptors.