Aries Systems Corporation

Gaps in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) throughout the scholarly publishing landscape have become increasingly exposed in recent years. Due to the longstanding North American/Euro-centric standard of publishing, deeply ingrained barriers and disparities for underrepresented or minority groups are evident. As such, the same voices and viewpoints are consistently amplified – limiting the potential of published research and making it less reflective of the diverse global communities it is intended to serve. Many productive conversations and efforts have been made in the scholarly ecosystem to understand and support DEI, but knowing where to start can be difficult without hard data to inform strategies for change.

The Joint Commitment, a collective of 56 publishers and organizations worldwide across a wide range of disciplines, pledges “to improve inclusion and diversity in scholarly publishing with and for the research community” by dissecting their own processes to minimize biases. Signatories of the commitment have divided themselves into subgroups and combined their resources, expertise, and insights to set standards for building innovative solutions for DEI. The Diversity Data Questions subgroup of the Joint Commitment developed a set of standardized questions for collecting self-reported gender, race, and ethnicity (GRE) data, which Aries has incorporated into Editorial Manager® (EM). With these integrated schemas, publishers can easily capture self-reported GRE information from Authors, Editors, and Reviewers to enable evidence-based decisions toward improving diversity and inclusion.

Harnessing the Joint Commitment’s endorsed schemas promotes a standardized approach to collecting this data across journals, but how is this data to be analyzed? To delve into the tapped and untapped potential of reporting user-disclosed inclusionary data in publishing, Aries consulted with our user community during the Discovery Roundtables session at the 2024 Editorial Manager User Group (EMUG) meeting in June. An interactive workshop designed to help inform our market research and product strategy, the EMUG 2024 Discovery Roundtables session divided attendees into focus groups dedicated to four key topics led by the Aries team. This digest serves as the third installment in a four-part blog series on insights gained during the workshop.

As a hot topic in the scholarly publishing industry, many organizations have already taken steps to further their DEI priorities. With a better glimpse into how our customers are formulating and executing DEI strategies against their existing practices, capacity, and expertise, Aries can determine how to best support those interested in using inclusionary data measurement. Leveraging the Rapid Ideation technique, members of the Aries team solicited ideas in lightning-round discussions, grouped like comments into themes, and brainstormed potential solutions with our user community. To support the discussion, our teams asked attendees to consider the following:

• Who in your organization is responsible for this kind of reporting? One person across multiple journals, or your regular editorial staff?
• What areas are publishers looking to improve regarding DEI? What are their goals?
• How does your organization prioritize this?
• What kind of GRE data are publishers already proactively collecting and how do they currently leverage it?
• What new insights are you looking to report on?
• What kinds of actions are journals looking to take on DEI with the help of gender, race, and ethnicity data, both within and outside the system/workflows? (e.g. editorial boards)
• What are common ways your journal(s) report this data? What are your reporting needs? Do you follow any industry standards? Do you also leverage any external reporting or analytics tools?
• Where is your organization getting support to progress effectively, be that from in-house experts, other publishers, the joint commitment, or system vendors that support data collection, or elsewhere?

It was quickly determined that there was a mix of how far along our customers are on DEI initiatives. While a few clients were already using the inclusionary data collection schemas in EM, the majority had not yet enabled this feature. Some attendees noted some efforts already made by their organizations to track diversity based on country of origin in the system, but had not yet started collecting gender, race, and ethnicity data from users. It was raised that some journals have concerns about the acceptance or privacy laws around collecting this information, which has prevented them from moving forward with collection and DEI efforts. Groups discussed difficulties with response rates and pushback from users, as one attendee shared that some of their users were upset with the GRE data form due to the assumption it would be used to discriminate against them. A few attendees felt the Joint Commitment’s schemas were too rigid and that the lack of customization by journals could cause confusion or limit the potential of data collection. For example, there were some objections to the ethnicity options listed and a desire to explore collecting even more demographic data beyond GRE, but the system does not allow for the editing or adding of questions and responses. Groups then raised challenges related to users’ experience when self-reporting their data, including the lack of different languages available, confusion on how to opt-out or not disclose, having to repeatedly answer the GRE prompts for all journals they are associated with, not enough clear opportunities to update the information, and inability to remove the information themselves from the Update My Information page.

After the rapid-fire exchange of current roadblocks, Aries staff worked with attendees to identify the underlying themes across the input shared thus far in the workshop. This exercise revealed a desire for expansion of inclusionary data collection, prioritization of the end-user experience during data disclosure, sensitivity to data security and legality, and using this data to identify opportunities for growth. With these common themes established, groups brainstormed potential themes that Aries, publishers, and the Joint Commitment can consider to enhance inclusionary data collection and reporting.

While customization in some areas or widening the scope of data captured can be explored, the Aries team reiterated our dedication to following the recommended practices put forth by the Joint Commitment and encouraged attendees to submit their feedback directly to the signatories. Some ideas proposed by groups at EMUG for the Joint Commitment to consider included adding questions related to disabilities and age to be inclusive to those with unique challenges/limitations and recognizing early vs. mid vs. late-career researchers in their database. Clients also expressed interest in collecting GRE information and other inclusionary data from co-Authors and being able to report across all the granular sub-roles available in EM. A common request from groups was the ability to propagate self-reported data across sister publications, making it easier for publishers to report across their portfolio and eliminating the need for the user to repeatedly disclose for that publisher. Additional opportunities to cater to the end-user experience include adding helpful resources/instructions or making the existing context more prominent by transforming existing links into noticeable buttons. Also, journals requested an option for users to indicate they prefer not to disclose inclusionary data upfront instead of having to select that answer for each single question in the survey. Working with the Joint Commitment to create official translations for multi-lingual sites/users and exploring options for pop-up reminders for users to disclose or update their inclusionary information could help increase the response rate and user engagement.

When discussing data sensitivity, accuracy, and storage logistics, groups at EMUG proposed some potential options to ease some of these concerns. This includes allowing the user to enter information anonymously (which would still allow for the data to be reported on but not being tied to the individual), allowing the user to delete or request for their information to be removed from the system, prompting the user to keep their information updated, and making the journal’s privacy policy information prominent. Despite the limited tracking of DEI-related data by attendees at present, there is interest in expanding and analyzing this data over time to determine opportunities for growth and measure performance of diversity efforts. Groups recommended allowing self-reported inclusionary data to be cross-referenced with other key data in EM. This includes manuscript metadata, Author/Reviewer classifications, regions/countries, institutions and affiliations, editorial roles, accept/reject Author decisions or invited/accepted Reviewer statistics, and more. Attendees also suggested DEI-related reporting dashboards and canned reports that unveil potential shortcomings and opportunities for improvement. Adding a report that indicates which users have not responded to the GRE survey was noted by most groups in the workshop. When asked how they would leverage inclusionary reports, attendees stated they would look to encourage diversity in Authorship, Reviewer pools, editorial boards, create mentorship options for greener Editors and Reviewers, penetrate new or underrepresented markets/regions, and develop education for editorial staff to ensure conscious and unconscious bias is managed properly within the journal. Lastly, groups requested that inclusionary reports from EM be exportable to enable further evaluation through third-party analytics tools.

“The collaborative, thought-provoking Discovery Roundtables workshop was one of my favorite parts of EMUG 2024, and I was thrilled to discuss this important topic in more depth with EM/PM users,” said Christine Donovan, Aries Account Coordinator. “Speaking directly with publishers about their goals for collecting and analyzing user-reported inclusionary data was incredibly enlightening. We gained valuable insights into our users’ current practices, priorities, and long-term objectives for this data that will help inform the roadmap for our inclusionary data collection and reporting solutions going forward.”

Check out our high-level recap of the recent user group meeting and catch our final post in the four-part 2024 Discovery Digest blog series next week!