Last week, with the support of Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP) leadership and the SSP’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Committee, we posted a listing for a new position with The Scholarly Kitchen. We are seeking someone with expertise in diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) issues to help support our authors and editors at the blog.

graphic describing position listing

DEIA efforts are important to the SSP and across our community as a whole, and a significant amount of Scholarly Kitchen posts address these issues and programs. DEIA issues also come up in posts that aren’t directly focused on those subjects, both in the posts and in the comments. Our regular and guest authors do our best, but many of us are not experts in these areas. The last few years have been filled with learning experiences at The Scholarly Kitchen, and our goal is to continue to learn, and continue to do better by our readers.

So we’re looking for some help. The person filling the new position will provide support to Scholarly Kitchen authors, help moderate comments, and liaise with SSP leadership and the DEI Committee. We’d be thrilled if that person also wants to write original posts or help to bring in guest posts as well. Time commitment will vary, depending on the content available week to week but we don’t estimate this taking more than five hours a week on average at most. The position comes with a stipend and funds for ongoing DEIA training to help further the editor’s expertise.

Please do take a look at the advertisement for details and consider joining us. This is a great opportunity to work with some amazing colleagues and to be a positive force for good across the scholarly communications community. Applications are due by November 15, 2021.

David Crotty

David Crotty

David Crotty is a Senior Consultant at Clarke & Esposito, a boutique management consulting firm focused on strategic issues related to professional and academic publishing and information services. Previously, David was the Editorial Director, Journals Policy for Oxford University Press. He oversaw journal policy across OUP’s journals program, drove technological innovation, and served as an information officer. David acquired and managed a suite of research society-owned journals with OUP, and before that was the Executive Editor for Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, where he created and edited new science books and journals, along with serving as a journal Editor-in-Chief. He has served on the Board of Directors for the STM Association, the Society for Scholarly Publishing and CHOR, Inc., as well as The AAP-PSP Executive Council. David received his PhD in Genetics from Columbia University and did developmental neuroscience research at Caltech before moving from the bench to publishing.

Discussion

3 Thoughts on "We Are Seeking a Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility Associate Editor"

Is this basically a voluntary post, given that you say there is ‘a small stipend’ rather than fees or salary? If so, it discriminates against those on low income, which rather seems to go against the aim of having the position. I suggest that the SSP makes it a freelance role instead, and pays according to the expertise required.

Hi Anna, thanks for bringing this up. It’s something that the group putting together this position recognized and spent a lot of time working on. Please be assured, this is a paid position, although given the nature of SSP, we’d like to think there’s some volunteerism involved as well — we want someone dedicated to the betterment of the scholarly communications community, and that should be their primary motivation, rather than just doing this for a paycheck.

But the compensation is commensurate with what we estimate the amount of work involved to be — that’s something that may evolve over time, as would the compensation offered if the job proves to be more time consuming than our initial estimate of less than 5 hours per week on average. A requirement of being a TSK Chef is that you have to be an SSP member, which is necessary to get covered by our insurance. So if the person hired does not have a membership covered by their employer, that will be included as well.

Note that I’m the only one at TSK other than this person receiving a stipend because of the additional work needed to run the blog, and what’s being offered here is similar to what I receive. Does that seem reasonable? As with all matters, we’re always open to learning more and doing better.

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