21 Journals to Be Renamed as Springer Nature and Clarivate Work Together to Enable Titles to Become Gender Neutral 

From Springer Nature:

Springer Nature and Clarivate share a commitment to building an inclusive research culture and championing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in the communities they serve, supporting Sustainable Development Goal 10 aimed at reducing inequalities.

The organisations have agreed a process which will see the names of twenty one journals in Springer Nature’s German language medical portfolio change to become more clearly inclusive, while Clarivate will enable them to retain their indexing with no break in coverage and no disruption to their journal metrics in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR).

These changes are being made because the journals, part of the Springer Medizin imprint, had been named after the profession to which their content was targeted and in the German language the gender-neutral titles for professions is usually identical to the masculine form.

The new titles, coming into effect in June, will now focus on the specialist field it is publishing research in. For example, Der Internist will change to Die Innere Medizin (Internal Medicine) and Der Chirurg (The Surgeon) to Die Chirurgie (Surgery). The content concept, thematic focus and viability of each title will remain unchanged.

Dr. Paul Herrmann, Director Journals and ePublishing at Springer Medizin said: “We believe that diversity, equity and inclusion are essential to achieving Springer Nature’s mission to open doors to discovery. Medicine has long since ceased to be male-dominated. Across the medical profession today, the proportion of women is around 50 percent, in some areas it is significantly higher.  It is important therefore that, as one of the leading publishers in academic research, we do our part to make gender equality in medicine more visible. Making sure that our journals properly and explicitly reflect the communities they are part of is a small, but important, step towards greater inclusion.”

Dr Nandita Quaderi, Editor-in-Chief and VP Editorial for Web of Science, Clarivate said: “Clarivate continuously reviews and updates practices to remove barriers to broader inclusion. We are delighted that we can accommodate these positive changes to the journals’ names in a way that supports the continuity of their content and their earned scholarly reputation. In support of this initiative, we will make an exception to our current policy to avoid a break in Web of Science coverage or disruption to their published metrics in the JCR.”

Implementing these changes is just one part of the work Springer Nature is doing to support DEI in academic publishing, by working to eliminate barriers to creating, discovering and using knowledge, and supporting more equitable outcomes.  Please visit here for more information.

See Also: Academic Publishers Collaborating in Fight Against Bias Announce Key Action on Diversity Data Collection (via RSOC)

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