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NISO Prioritizes DEI Efforts, Joins C4DISC

NISO Prioritizes DEI Efforts, Joins C4DISC

May 2021

Following the recent Board approval of our diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policy and the launch of our newly formed DEI Committee, we are delighted to announce that NISO has joined the Coalition for Diversity and Inclusion in Scholarly Communications (C4DISC) as a member organization.

C4DISC was formally established in September 2020, following several years of work by a group of scholarly communications organizations that saw the need for better cross-industry collaboration and cooperation to address the DEI challenges we collectively face. NISO adopted the C4DISC Statement of Principles last year, and we have now joined as a full member, enabling us to have a say in governance and strategy for the organization. We are looking forward to working closely with our fellow C4DISC members, which include several of our own member organizations (Atla, Association of University Presses, Crossref, and NASIG), to help effect real change in our community.

As a standards organization with an active community of 500+ volunteers who have significant experience working on our own projects and working groups, we believe that NISO can provide concrete support for important C4DISC initiatives such as the ongoing development of additional Toolkits for Equity. We’ll be sharing opportunities to get involved with C4DISC here in I/O and on social media, so please look out for more information and consider volunteering.

NISO will be represented on the C4DISC steering group by Board member Rebecca McLeod, Managing Director of Harvard Science Review, and formerly the official Society for Scholarly Publishing’s representative. 

“NISO established its DEI committee to help overcome barriers to equity and inclusion in the information management community, and joining C4DISC is an important and logical next step,” says Maria Stanton, DEI committee chair and Director of Production for Atla. “Being a full member of C4DISC opens opportunities to collaborate with other industry organizations, to identify and to take meaningful action that can impact the critical lack of diversity within the world of scholarly communications.”

“Working collectively among the various stakeholders in scholarly communications so that we speak with a common voice on issues of equity and inclusion is important to advance DEI perspectives,” said Todd Carpenter, NISO’s Executive Director. “Our goals will be to add the perspective and the voice of NISO’s community to the C4DISC conversations, particularly around issues related to technology, formats, and business applications that can create challenging DEI-related concerns, as well as to contribute to furthering community education around DEI issues. We look forward to learning from each other throughout the process.”