Policy and Advocacy

The Policy & Advocacy Committee (PAC) works in partnership across the research ecosystem to advocate for policies which support researchers and the quality, integrity and sustainability of scholarly communication. In dialogue with governments, funders, institutions, researchers, and others, we aim to enable and drive change, particularly in support of emerging Open Science practices, including Open Access.

While representing the publishing community in all its diversity, we speak with one voice to governments, funders and university leaders, responding to their missions while advocating for policies which accommodate both change and sustainability.  We provide evidence on the value publishers add to research and its communication, and the wider contributions the industry makes to societies and economies.

IDEA (Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility) in scholarly peer-review

In November 2022, ALLEA (European Federation of Academies of Sciences and Humanities), GYA
(Global Young Academy) and STM (International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical
Publishers) convened a moderated panel discussion about “Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and
Accessibility (IDEA) in Scholarly Peer Review” with four distinguished panellists from the global
research and publishers’ communities.

The scholarly peer review system currently does not accurately represent the research community as
a whole: women, researchers from the Global South, early career researchers, and non-native English
speakers are all among those under-represented. In addition, researchers not affiliated with the
traditional well-established institutions often experience a disadvantage when their work issubmitted
for peer review. Together, these biases directly affect individuals’ career progression and are likely to
impact the quality of research outputs and diversification of the research system in general.

The aim of this webinar was to create more awareness of this topic, discuss existing barriers and
gather input for possible solutions to overcome the challenge. To set the scene for an informed
discussion, the moderator introduced the topic, followed by short opening statements in which each
panellist outlined the barriers and possible solutions from their viewpoint. The audience had the
opportunity to actively contribute to the discussion by sharing their views via different polls and asking
questions to the panellists.

This short event report summarizes the main themes that emerged during the discussions and
identifies areas that can represent a path forward. The programme for the webinar, detailed
information on the speakers, and the complete recording, can be found here.