A Project to Assess the Current State of Equity and Identify Longitudinal Shifts in the Scholarly Publishing Workforce
May 31, 2023— C4DISC, a coalition of organizations in scholarly publishing and academia dedicated to advancing diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility, will launch the second implementation of the Workplace Equity Survey (WE Survey) at the Society for Scholarly Publishing’s 45th Annual Meeting in Portland, Oregon. The 2023 WE Survey will be open from May 29-June 30, 2023, seeking participation from all who work in the global scholarly publishing industry.
SSP Executive Director and C4DISC steering committee member Melanie Dolechek highlighted the industry wide support for this important project: ”C4DISC is pleased to work closely with the WE Survey working group, under the leadership of co-chairs Simone Taylor and Chhavi Chauhan. For the first time, the scholarly publishing industry will be able to identify longitudinal changes in diversity, equity, and inclusion.” The 2023 WE Survey will evaluate progress against benchmarks established in 2018, when the first WE survey uncovered a highly inequitable workforce that did not reflect the demographic composition of the general population or consistently embrace a diversity of perspectives and contributions. The results were published in Learned Publishing and the supporting data are openly available in the IPCSR data archive at https://doi.org/10.3886/E116922V1.
“The Covid-19 pandemic, political unrest, and economic instability have triggered a wider awareness of systemic inequities in our society. It will be interesting to learn how the workforce perceives progress towards our stated commitments to advance equity and belonging. We hope you’ll share your experience in the 2023 WE Survey,” said Simone Taylor, PhD, Publisher and Chief of Publishing Operations, American Psychiatric Association.
Like the 2018 WE Survey, the 2023 version will be global and open to everyone who works at publishers, service providers, and across the spectrum of related organizations, companies, and consultancies in scholarly publishing. While there are some changes to reflect lessons learned, the survey questionnaire is quite similar to the original and includes questions about work-life balance, career breaks, career satisfaction, professional development, mentoring, networking, demographics, and attitudes and behaviors.
Chhavi Chauhan, PhD, Director of Scientific Outreach, American Society for Investigative Pathology, noted that C4DISC hopes to exceed the nearly 1,200 respondents who completed the 2018 effort. “The more people who participate and complete all sections of the survey, the more accurate a reading it will capture on the workplace experience in scholarly publishing. We welcome your personal stories of your lived experiences and perceptions—the access or barriers to opportunity, inclusivity, and equity you are encountering.” Since the survey is being conducted and analyzed independently by C4DISC, respondents can rest assured of their safety and anonymity. Data collection and management is GDPR compliant; any personally identifying information will be removed when the aggregated data and survey report are published.
The Association of University Presses is a founding member of C4DISC and is pleased to support the 2023 WE Survey. In tandem with the Lee & Low sponsored Diversity Baseline Survey (DBS 3.0) that examines the multi-sector North American publishing industry, the WE survey promises to give our geographically diverse and editorially distinct community a deep understanding of our broader workforce and work cultures, as well as updated benchmarks against which equity, inclusion, and belonging initiatives can be judged and further developed.