Diversity in Scholarly Publishing: Lessons Learned to Create a More Inclusive Future

There is a need for a greater collective responsibility to accelerate the change to more diverse and equitable systems of scholarly communications and this program suggests why this change is needed and how it can be achieved.

The ACRL Research and Scholarly Environment Committee (ReSEC) released an important report, Open and Equitable Scholarly Communications: Creating a More Inclusive Future (ACRL, 2019). This work suggests a broader and more inclusive approach for academic librarians and the scholarly communications community to “provide an overview of trends, identify effective and promising practices, and delineate important questions where deeper inquiry is needed to accelerate the transition to more open, inclusive, and equitable systems of scholarship.”

Further, the Library Publishing Coalition has released An Ethical Framework for Library Publishing (2017) that addresses diversity, equity and inclusion, and the Diversity Baseline Survey (DBS2.0, 2020) addresses how these problems are not present in just scholarly publishing but are more widespread across publishing in general. Colleagues on the publishing side of the house are also examining how to best achieve these EDI goals as they explain in the Scholarly Kitchen blogpost, “Driving Gender Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in Scholarly Communications: The Power of an Active ERG” (August 24, 2020). With these resources and a publishing outlook that is more EDI focused, this program will explore how scholarly publishing by and for librarians can best achieve more equity, diversity, and inclusion of its ranks of authors, editors, and reviewers and provide broader viewpoints in content for its readers.

Books and journals share a common practice in reinforcing the hierarchies of scholarly publishing. According to the DBS 2.0 Survey, the publishing workforce is beginning to show slightly more representation among under-represented populations, and the range of authors and the breadth of content released, suggest the scholarly publishing world show that greater diversity is achievable demonstrating a more inclusive reach among all stakeholders. Within the realm of research and scholarly communication, designing and adopting a more inclusive process demands that the range of human differences be recognized. In order to embrace fundamental principles required to achieve these goals, the publishing and library communities must join in expanding the scholarly communication processes and experience. To sustain any programmatic changes, new infrastructures and systems must be created to advance access to more readers and invite a wider community of potential authors to share their experiences via publishing are essential and required at all editorial levels.

Most research agendas today promote openness, inclusivity and equity in an effort to engage and serve the broadest communities. Removing barriers to access is a major transformation in publishing as is having more diverse representation among authors and content. Transformational changes in scholarly publishing includes removing barriers to access while achieving more diverse representation among authors, editors and content. As the 2019 ACRL report indicates, achieving EDI is about rethinking participation in research at all levels to include authors, the editorial review process and more open access to published work.

This program will focus on what would make scholarly publishing more diverse, inclusive and equitable. The panel will address the different roles required in scholarly publishing by covering how EDI contributes to richer professional careers for librarians and information specialists and provide insights into how Special Collections & Archives meets these needs. Also, how it shares common practices by following codes of conduct related to EDI to reflect the widest range of topics by achieving more diversity among its authors, editors and reviewers, so that scholarly publishing affirms the entire spectrum of relevant work associated with diversity, equity and inclusion from research to practice.