Category: News

Wednesday, July 9, 2025 | 11:00 am-12:00 pm ET

In today’s global landscape, the scholarly publishing industry is increasingly recognizing the imperative of integrating values centered around Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA), and sustainability, including the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), into their organizational frameworks. It is essential that the publishing industry and publishing process better reflect the multiple dimensions of diversity within the research community and ensure representation of the very often marginalized or vulnerable communities who are most impacted by SDG-relevant research.

This session will explore the mechanisms and strategies employed by organizations to incorporate these values into their objectives and activities. Drawing upon the lens of DEI, organizations establish DEIA liaisons and foster communities of practice to ensure diverse perspectives are considered at all levels.

Furthermore, the designation of sustainability champions within an organization can facilitate the alignment of business strategies with environmental and social responsibility goals, within and outside the organization. From the perspectives of three organizations, this session will underscore the significance of integrating these values into organizational structures, highlighting the various ways of fostering innovation, resilience, and positive societal impact. Registration is free. Please share widely.

Moderator

• Laurie Kaplan, Sr. Manager, Content ProQuest/Clarivate

Speakers

• Dana Compton, Managing Director & Publisher American Society of Civil Engineers
• Sowmya Swaminathan, Director, DEI, Research, Springer Nature
• William (Bill) Deluise, Corporate Vice President, Communications and Corporate Impact, Wiley

Register free now!

In February, the Coalition for Diversity and Inclusion in Scholarly Communications hosted a Rapid Response Day addressing the current political situation around DEI. Dozens of community members came together to share knowledge, identify priorities, and begin work on needed resources. One of those resources was a document providing guidance for professional membership communities (like C4DISC’s own member communities) who want to continue to advance DEI work in a hostile environment. That resource is now available!

Guidance for Professional Membership Communities

This document was inspired by the Toolkits for Equity, but it is a much less polished resource. It was crowdsourced during the Rapid Response Day and over the following two weeks, and has not undergone rigorous editorial or peer review. Due to the urgency of the issue and the rapidly changing environment, we felt it was more important to release the guidance quickly. That said, we are leaving it in a Google Doc for ease of updating, and we want to hear from you if you notice any errors or problems with the document. Please email c4disc@gmail.com with feedback. 

We hope this guidance is useful to C4DISC members and to other professional membership communities. Academic institutions, corporations, and many nonprofits are facing constraints on their ability to advance diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility. Professional membership communities – with their democratic governance structures and distributed member bases – have an opportunity to pick up the baton and keep this work moving. We hope that this document will inspire those communities to do so and provide some useful guidance on how.

The next C4DISC Community of Practice call will be on April 10, 2025 at 11 am Eastern / 4 pm UK. Time converter link.

The theme this time is Securing and Sustaining Organizational Commitment to DEIA Initiatives.

At our 1 year anniversary call, our COP members said they would like to hear from the community on how others have achieved C-Suite and senior leadership buy in. Not only can it be challenging to present a case, but also to obtain sufficient and sustained leadership engagement and resource. Further, the current climate in the US brings new challenges.

Some questions that may guide group discussions:

• Discuss existing corporate support and implementation challenges:
  1. Many US corporations have publicly committed to DEIA initiatives, often in response to social movements and increasing pressure from employees, consumers, and investors. This includes statements of commitment, the creation of DEIA roles, and the establishment of employee resource groups (ERGs).
  2. Currently, in the US, there is a growing backlash against DEIA, with legal challenges to affirmative action and corporate DEIA programs. This creates a challenging environment for implementation.
• Sharing of committee members’ experiences with organizational buy-in or lack of:
  1. 1. Discuss why initiatives lose momentum and how to maintain them

   

• What are strategies for embedding DEIA principles into standard operations:
  1. Identify key stakeholders needed for successful implementation (who are they, what are their roles, titles)

   

• How do we measure success beyond traditional metrics:
  1. Are there alternative funding models for DEIA initiatives

• Are there targeted approaches for increasing leadership buy-in?
  1. 1. Effective communication strategies to demonstrate value beyond financial returns
     2. What accountability measures can be established

   

Participants will have breakout room discussions around any aspect of this topic they wish to bring and we will come together for the last part of the call to hear key takeaways.

If you are a COP member you will receive the Zoom link ahead of the call. If you have not yet joined the COP then – learn more here on how to join the community. We have (usually bimonthly) calls looking at topics suggested by community members and a discussion group for asynchronous communication.

You can find previous DEIA Community of Practice Call Summaries here.

Volunteers Needed!

C4DISC DEIA Community of Practice

C4DISC is seeking volunteers to help manage our Community of Practice, a virtual space for connecting and peer learning around DEIA in scholarly communications – for those with a dedicated DEIA role or with a DEIA remit as part of their role, whether in a paid or volunteer capacity. The Community is a year old and we would like to augment the current planning committee so tasks can be shared. Many hands make light work!

Working group members are responsible for chairing the virtual discussions, soliciting conversation topics from participants, planning and facilitating the virtual discussions, and creating notes summarising discussions. We estimate the time commitment as a maximum of 2 hours per month.

Interested?

If you would like to apply to participate in this working group, please complete and submit the application online. Please enter COP in the field asking which working group you are applying for. 

Volunteers for standing working groups serve a two-year term. Any person interested in furthering the work of C4DISC can join a working group. You do not have to be employed by a member or partner organization to get involved.

Please share widely with all who may be interested, both within your organisation and wider community. Send any questions you may have to c4disc.communications@gmail.com

The Steering Committee would like to invite you to participate in a Rapid Response Sprint on Thursday, February 13. See below for details.

Purpose: To assemble resources and provide support to C4DISC member and partner organizations and community members as they respond to the current political landscape around DEIA work.

Format: This will be a day-long, drop-in sprint (Thursday, 2/13, 9am-4pm ET). There will be an agenda of activities and designated facilitators for each one. Participants can come for as much or as little of the day as they want. Community members interested in contributing who can’t make it to the sprint can still sign up to be included in a pool of volunteers to tackle action items coming out of the sprint.

How it will work: If you’re interested in participating, please fill out the Google Form. We will send you the call-in link and the agenda as it comes together. You can drop in at any point during the day based on your availability and interest.

Agenda: The agenda is still in development, but it will definitely include the following work:

• Drafting a communication highlighting existing C4DISC resources that may be of use to community members at this time.

• Beginning work on a resource for professional member communities (like the members of C4DISC), drawing from our existing Toolkits for Equity.

• Best practices for responding to current events at the federal, state, and local levels.

Questions? Email c4disc@gmail.com.

Google Form: https://forms.gle/RSb3vsGUaYZaEH7y8

Thank you for your continued support!