Elsevier is pleased to announce the first step of visualizing the gender balance of its scientific journals’ editors. Following a successful pilot project, over 500 journals will now display the self-reported data of their editors’ gender to support openness and increase inclusion and diversity (I&D) in this space.
February 11 also marks the United Nation’s “International Day of Women and Girls in Science”, which aims to promote that full and equal access to and participation in science for women and girls is achieved. To demonstrate Elsevier’s participation, we are actively working to create a better gender balance and diversity amongst our editorial boards: The Lancet portfolio of journals has already achieved a 50-50 percent gender balance; while Cell Press has established an Inclusion & Diversity Statement and is charting a course to parity.
Philippe Terheggen, Managing Director of Elsevier’s STM Journals said: “We are excited to be working alongside our editor communities on such an important and timely initiative, which can only help increase the visibility of our journals and enhance their ability to provide accurate data in this area. While we are likely to evaluate our current benchmark, we look forward to expanding the indicator’s usage across all our journals.”
Expanding this level of transparency will not only raise awareness of the gender balance across Elsevier’s journals’, but also show that we are committed to working with our partners to build more inclusive research and health ecosystems. Elsevier believes that we can make a real impact by providing the best analytics possible to help make better evidence-based decisions, and ensure that our content and solutions are as inclusive as possible and provide a means to accurately report across gender, race & ethnicity and geographical dimensions.
Researchers can now access infographics on each of the journals’ homepages. Gender indicators will show how balanced certain groups, such as a journal’s editorial board, are and provide a benchmark to measure against other Elsevier journals.
An initial finding from the pilot revealed that women currently make up only 25 percent of available Editor-in-Chief roles in Elsevier journals. This clearly presents an opportunity for further discussion and improvement.
Over 500 journals from diverse subject areas including health & medical sciences, life sciences, social sciences and the physical sciences are now available. Click here to see a live example of the indicator.
Elsevier is committed to driving change in gender balance and will take significant steps towards understanding how to improve such areas, with further feedback from our author and editor communities, to improve the display of these gender indicators across Elsevier’s entire collection.
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area.
He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit.
Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com.
