Day 3 STM Week 2018
Diversity and Inclusion
An STM Week Event

8:45

Light continental breakfast & networking

9:30

Opening Keynote: Femi Otitoju, Managing Director, Challenge Consultancy Ltd

Developing a culture of dignity in the workplace

Building a strategy around dignity in the workplace. The session will include a discussion of the results of a pre-circulated survey on unconscious bias.

10:30 

Why do you need a Women in a Publishing group anyway?

Fiona Counsell, Taylor and Francis, Head of Open Access Operations & Policy, Taylor & Francis / Routledge Journals

In 2018 Gender Pay Gap data was released by every UK business employing more than 250 staff. The results were not happy reading for the academic publishing industry with the Median Gender Pay Gap as high as 40% in some companies. The industry has also experienced a grassroots interest in diversity and inclusivity including, but not limited to, gender, implying the need for publishers to engage more with these issues. The writing and advocacy of people such as Sian Harris, Charlie Rapple, Alison Mudditt, Melanie Dolecheck, Alice Meadows, Phill Jones and Nancy Roberts has shone light on this issue and prompted vigorous debate. In this context, this session will cover the experience of running Women in Publishing at Taylor & Francis (T&F), a network launched and led by a committee of employees. Our mission is to celebrate the success of women at T&F and the wider industry, provide networking opportunities, and promote professional and career development. We maintain a lively online forum, and organise events in a range of formats to meet our goals. Our success is such that these events are often standing room only, and we have gained a notable amount of traction, such that we now liaise with T&F’s HR and Learning and Development teams and have spawned sister chapters in our global offices. During this talk I will give a flavour of our activities and the engagement and feedback we’ve had from our colleagues. I will also share the challenges we’ve faced and lessons learned, including the debates over our necessity, remit and representation. This insight will be of particular value for others hoping to organise similar grassroots initiatives.

10:50

Refreshment break & networking

11:20

Case studies in inclusion:

The STRIDE committee at Emerald Publishing

Helen Beddow, Publisher, Gender and Diversity, Emerald Publishing

Challenges and opportunities in hiring and HR policy in small organisations

Laura Cox, Chief Financial and Operating Officer, Ringgold, Inc.

Ringgold is a small virtual company with staff across the UK and US. This brings challenges and opportunities in making the organisation more diverse and inclusive. This talk will lay out some of the changes that we made at Ringgold in our recruitment practices and more unified HR policies within two rather different employment landscapes. Inclusion remains challenging, which is complicated without a physical building and everyone working together, or even at the same time.

11:50 

Dignity, Diversity and inclusion in the modern workplace. A question and answer session

Moderated by:  Nikul Patel, Publisher (Open Access), OUP 

Femi Otitoju, Managing Director, Challenge Consultancy Ltd

Fiona Counsell, Taylor and Francis, Taylor and Francis, Head of Open Access Operations & Policy, Taylor & Francis / Routledge Journals

Laura Cox, Chief Financial and Operating Officer, Ringgold, Inc.

12:30 

Lunch

Afternoon talk 1:

Science benefits from diversity

Elisa De Ranieri, Editor-in-Chief Nature Communications, Springer Nature (effective January 2019)

For publishers, action on diversity and inclusion can’t begin and end with our own internal processes.  There is an imperative for us to find ways to address any problem that is standing in the way of great research. Find out about how Springer Nature is working with the academic community to increase representations of diversity in the scholarly work they publish, and how internal diversity programmes also play their part. What actions can the scholarly publishing industry take, together, to help drive change more quickly?

14:00 

Afternoon talk 2:

Diversity of Editorial Boards, a call for industry collaboration

Shelley Allen, Publisher, Taylor and Francis

While 2018 has been largely about diversity and inclusion within the STM publishing industry, we also have a key role to play in diversity and inclusion in the research communities that we serve. It is widely acknowledged that diversity, particularly that of gender, is an issue within the Engineering sector, both within industry and the academy. The Engineering and Computer Science teams have engaged in small scale experimentation to increase the diversity of applicants for the Editor-in-Chief role, within Taylor & Francis journals. This talk will share the experiences of the teams in these endeavours, considering what needs to change, ways in which changes can be effected, and possible timeframes for change.

14:30 

Refreshment break and networking

15:00 

Closing Panel:

Promoting Experience in Peer Review: Use of Preprints, Blogs, and Training for Early Career Researchers

Moderated by: Heather Ruland Staines, Director of Partnerships, Hypothes.is

Teresa Rayon,  Post-Doctoral Fellow, Francis Crick Institute

Sam Hindle, bioRxiv, Content Lead | Co-founder, PREreview

Emma Schumeyko, Managing Editor, American Society for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics

Amye Kenall, Global Head of Life Sciences, SpringerNature

Researchers provide a valuable service to their peers when they serve as peer reviewers for scholarly publications, yet they may find themselves ill prepared for the experience. Scholarly publishers, associations, and initiatives are trying to remedy this. The Company of Biologists launched preLights in early 2018 to provide an outlet for early career researchers to hone their critical assessment of papers by selecting important preprints, writing useful digests and crucially explaining why they found the research important. PREreview launched mid-2017 to provide resources to encourage early-career researchers (ECRs) to review preprints during journal clubs, and share their feedback with the community. It was developed by ECRs for ECRs to help increase diversity and inclusivity in the peer review process by providing training and acknowledgment for ECRs. Other initiatives, such as the American Society for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics, offer training programs and certifications in peer review. Learn about possibilities for early career researchers and find out how you might get involved in this important new movement.

16:00 

Close of Seminar Phill Jones, Seminar Director