How we're doing

Our progress on DORA commitments

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There are a number of things we've done to embed the DORA principles in our business and whilst there is still more planned our progress to date includes;

• We were the first publisher to announce our commitment to DORA in March 2019 and why we're doing this
• Ensuring our journal homepages include a wider range of journal-based metrics (see an example)
• We've launched and promoted Altmetrics as well as running webinars on alternative metrics
• We’ve partnered with I4OC joining the Initiative for Open Abstracts
• We are actively encouraging authors to register for ORCID
• Working with our Impact Advisory Board and other partners to discuss, share and experiment together to find new and better pathways to impact
   

Our progress on UN SDG Compact commitments

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In January 2021 we became a founding signatory of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) Publishers Compact and since then we have been working hard to embed the 10 actions across everything we do as a business.  It’s a long term commitment but so far we have:

• Launched an ethical procurement process that allows us to engage with suppliers about the SDGs and ensure that we work with partners that share our values.
• Refreshed our responsible business strategy to align with the SDGs with a focus on Education, Equity and the Environment.
• Bought together a team of 'champions' to raise awareness and promote the SDGs amongst our colleagues and communities.
• Developed and launched an on-demand resource for equality, diversity and inclusion. These resources are now a mandatory part of employee onboarding and at the end of 2021 60% of our employees had accessed these materials.
• Launched Emerald Engage to support researchers who may have been disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Actively acquired and promoted content with 62% of Emerald journals being mapped to one or more SDGs.
• Focused our publishing programme towards the Gender Equality Goal through committing to increasing female and non-binary representation across editorial boards and authorship, as well as publishing Gender Pay Gap and Ethnicity Pay Gap reports.
• Facilitated an Indigenous Peoples Advisory Board who are supporting us by providing strategic advice and guidance across our commissioning focus of Indigenous research.
• Worked with Inclusive Employers to perform an end-to-end recruitment process and policy audit, which has supported the purchase of a new applicant tracking system to help make improvements to internal policies and processes.
• Improved recruitment practice to recruit talent representative of diverse community groups, aiming to have two different gender identities and two different ethnic or racial identities, represented on each shortlist.
• Introduced artificial intelligence to screen job adverts for gender-biased language, and introduced an anonymous application and screening process.
• Built on the legacy of equity, diversity and inclusion work at Emerald by combining the diversity and inclusion networks within each business. This group has representation from many demographics and intersections, and works in partnership with our equity, diversity and inclusion steering group to ensure relevant actions against SDGs 5, 8 and 10 remain consistent, fair, and reflect the needs of our colleagues and customer communities.
• Piloting the development of diversity and inclusion performance objectives with one team in each business.

Over the next year, we have plans to take this further by:

• Working with the Joint Commitment for Action on Inclusion and Diversity within Publishing, adding new questions to collect gender, race and ethnicity data within ScholarOne.
• Introducing a new Applicant Tracking System which will improve the collection of recruitment diversity data, and has interview scorecards and notes built into the system to increase fairness.

 Tony Roche and Emma Tregenza talk about our journey of progress with the SDG Publishers Compact.