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Open Access Issue on DEIA from Learned Publishing

Open Access Issue on DEIA from Learned Publishing

February 2023

Information Industry News

The January 2023 issue of Learned Publishing is offered as a useful reference for those scholarly content and service providers with an interest in the community's efforts towards building greater diversity, equity. and inclusion (DEI). Because of the issue's special focus on DEI, all material included is being made available on an open access basis. 

As the North American Editor of Learning Publishing, Lettie Conrad, noted in a February 7 Scholarly Kitchen post, "Whatever the framework, each article in this special issue represents the current debates and discussions about the intersectional dynamics of social prejudices and inequities at play in this important information sector — from power centers, like ivory towers and executive suites, dominated by white, English-speaking men, to inaccessible software, uneven access to scholarly literature, and outdated systems that perpetuate binary gender identities and racist paradigms."

NISO is proud to note the specific contribution of an article in this issue by NISO DEIA Committee members Ashley Wells Ajinkya, Behar Mehmani, Rajendrani Mukhopadhyay, and Maria Stanton working with NISO staff, Alice Meadows and Kimberly Gladfelter Graham included in that issue entitled Implementing a diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility strategy: Lessons learned at five scholarly communications organizations.  Looking at such diverse entities as the American Chemical Society, Benetch, Elsevier, Atla, and NISO, the article provides "several brief examples of specific initiatives that are being developed and implemented as part of the DEIA strategy at a range of different scholarly communications organizations." 

Key points of the article are:

  • Diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility (DEIA) is of increasing strategic importance to a wide range of organizations, including scholarly publishers and other information organizations.
  • Many of these organizations are now embedding specific DEIA initiatives in their strategic goals, supported by the budget and resources necessary to successfully implement them—however, progress towards achieving these goals is often slow and incremental.
  • While different organizations may have different experiences and areas of focus, there are also many similarities, which can be widely drawn on by anyone seeking to improve DEIA in their own organization or community.
  • This article focuses on five very different information organizations represented in NISO's DEIA Committee, which are working on improving DEIA—American Chemical Society, Atla, Benetech, Elsevier, and NISO—in order to make recommendations for other organizations in this space, based on our shared experiences.