Back in 2018, I interviewed Vicky Williams, CEO of Emerald Publishing, about their efforts to create a culture of diversity and inclusion. Attitudes towards diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) have undergone a lot of changes since then – from global outrage at George Floyd’s murder in 2019 to the Trump administration’s actively anti-DEIA policies today. While some organizations in our space (and elsewhere!) have been noticeably quiet about their commitment to DEIA, others are continuing to speak up and lead by example. SSP is, of course, one of those organizations; Emerald is another. And, while it’s clear from this interview that there is still plenty of work to be done, it’s also worth celebrating the progress that has been made, demonstrated in part by their recognition as a Times Top 50 Employer for Gender Equality.
I’d love to hear how other organizations are continuing to live their values – please feel free to share your own examples in the comments.
When we last spoke, Emerald’s diversity program (STRIDE – launched in late 2015) was mostly focused on gender issues. Is that program still going and, if so, how has it changed in the past 10 years?
It is, though not in the same guise or under the same banner. It was always our intention to start with gender equity and then broaden out from there. We essentially used gender as our test bed and, to be honest, there’s a lot I would do differently if we were starting out with that program again, but that’s part of the learning process. At the time, it was being driven by a small group of women in senior roles in the organization, so it was a safe space to learn and make mistakes.
That program was our origin story for where we are today with DEIA, and we owe it a lot. It created the impetus for change – we started to spin up a range of Employee Resource Groups (ERGs), we started to look at external diversity indicators that we could monitor and influence, and ultimately, we embedded DEIA at the heart of our organizational strategy. So essentially it’s gone from a small, discrete program to a company-wide mission.
What other diversity initiatives have you developed since then, both internal and external?
We’ve focused a lot on inclusive organizational design, which is always a work-in-progress, but I think we have some of the most progressive policies in the industry. As I mentioned, we launched a number of ERGs, which have now merged into one Inclusion Committee. Over time, this has allowed employee groups to take the reins, educate, and inform the wider employee base, and create a culture they want to be a part of.
We’ve done a lot of work to try to build our talent pipeline as inclusively as possible – for example, through fully anonymized applications, screening job adverts for biased language, skills-based interviews with objective scorecards, and fully transparent salary bands. We have paid internships, and partner with values-aligned recruitment and community agencies, such as RestLess for the over 50s, Radical Recruit who support marginalized individuals back into the workplace, SmartWorks, who aim to get women and other marginalized genders into stable and fulfilling employment, and Breaking Barriers, who support refugees in finding meaningful work. We also work with local schools and universities in the UK to introduce the talent of the future to the breadth that a publishing career can offer.
All of these interventions support inclusive practice. As an organization, our aim is to be open to all, and sometimes the smallest of changes can make a positive impact, supporting inclusion and social mobility. Transparency of salary bands is a good example. Research shows that, if candidates are asked what salary they expect, marginalized groups, in particular, often under-value themselves. They may also waste time on job applications when the salary level prohibits them from pursuing the role. Salary bands shouldn’t be a secret!
Since Covid, we’re a fully hybrid organization – employees can work from anywhere, with full flexibility and no core hours. We’ve been accredited by Flexa, who identify the best companies across a range of inclusive factors, for the past three years; and in 2024, we also became OpenOrg accredited, which essentially means that we commit to full transparency in our employee value proposition. All of this makes a tangible difference to recruitment and retention – for example, last year, 65% of our candidates were women or other marginalized genders, and almost 70% of internal promotions were of women and other marginalized genders.
Most recently, we were a founding signatory of the Declaration to Defend Research, which aims to foster collective action against the punitive measures attacking DEIA in the U.S. We’ve backed this up with a range of actions, including a partnership with EveryLibrary Institute.
This year, we’ve also started to do some work on neuroinclusive publishing pathways, working closely with neurodiverse researchers to change our guidelines and processes to create a more equitable publishing environment. The thing I’m most excited about here is the work we’re doing on peer review – this is currently in pilot phase, but if successful, will create a kinder environment for everyone.
Last year, we also saw the launch of our first ERG focused on men. A Brave Space for men is a forum in which to discuss a range of issues, from mental health to family matters, to the current disturbing environment promoting toxic masculinity.
Where has Emerald made most progress in terms of diversity and inclusion within the company?
We’ve made a lot of progress with gender equity. Within two years of us setting up the STRIDE program, we had achieved gender parity at both C-Suite and Senior Leadership Team (SLT) levels in the business. That wasn’t through quotas, but through organizational focus and flexibility. We’re now at a 60:40 female:male split on our C-Suite, and retain parity in our SLT.
I would point to three things which I feel have really propelled us forward:
- DEIA is intrinsic to our organizational vision, mission, strategy, and goals. It’s fully embedded in our brand. It’s something we are known for, something that our employees champion, and something that our editors, authors, and partners want to work with us for.
- It’s also embedded in our content program, particularly in our books list. We made the decision a number of years ago to commission across interdisciplinary missions aligned to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. We publish a range of content and opinion pieces aligned to these missions, calling for constructive dialogue and action on questions such as “Should billionaires exist?,” “Gender equality: what’s taking us so long?,” and “Education under threat: is innovation the key to resilience?.”
- Our internal DEIA program morphed from being led by the senior team to being owned by our employees, with sponsorship from the senior team. This was transformational, as it meant our DEIA strategy was a thread throughout the organization, with ownership and accountability fully embedded.
What areas are still in need of improvement – and what are your plans for addressing them?
We still have a gender pay gap. This isn’t a question of equitable pay for the same roles, but illustrative of the fact that we have more females in junior editorial roles, and more males in higher paid technology roles. This is a systemic issue, mirrored across the industry, as well as more widely in other industries. What is it that puts men off entering publishing in editorial roles? Why aren’t women attracted to tech? We’re really focusing on these areas to take positive action where we can, but that can be a slow process.
The racial diversity of both our UK (head office) and U.S. teams is also poor, which again is very reflective of the industry at large. While we employ local nationals in our global teams, we have a pipeline issue in the UK and the U.S. which only improves slightly year-on-year. We’ve tried many things to improve this position, and continue to do so, as many of the interventions are long-term. A few examples, as I already mentioned – we’ve been working with local schools and universities for a number of years to promote a career in publishing to an ethnically diverse audience; we’ve also worked with specialist recruitment agencies such as Radical Recruit on our internship program. These are small but targeted interventions, which I hope will build to radically change the face of our organization over the years to come.
Accurate data collection is also still a challenge. Currently, we have 74% of employees and 78% of submitting authors with partial or complete diversity data profiles. I’ve always been a firm believer that you can’t let data dictate your DEIA strategy, but data should inform it. I totally understand that the incentives to disclose personal, identifying data aren’t there, so we need to work towards trust of anonymization in the system.
Under the Trump administration, DEIA initiatives are under attack like never before in the US. There have also been ominous signs in other parts of the world, including the UK Supreme Court’s ruling that the legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex. Looking beyond Emerald, to scholarly communications more widely, how optimistic (or not) are you about the future of diversity initiatives like the ones you’ve been working on?
In the current climate, it’s difficult for any of us to feel blindly optimistic. The situation is bleak. I think rather than optimism, I feel the most acute responsibility to fight against the tide, to be vocal, and to corral the community as much as possible. That sometimes means sticking your head above the parapet, and it sometimes means being unpopular. I think it’s our moral obligation to challenge threats to, and dismantling of, the progress that has been so hard-won. It’s our responsibility to ensure the academic record reflects the diversity of the community it serves, and to ensure that diverse voices aren’t silenced. If that’s not a powerful mission, and something to get you out of bed every day, I don’t know what is.
The consequences of not doing that are dire. We start to publish sanitized science. We start to re-create an industry that is homogenous. We start to actively exclude, rather than include. We’re already seeing our communities hyper-sensitive to certain research terminology, as well as seeking anonymous publication. Customers are cancelling or sanitizing certain DEIA-focused products. I’ve got to be hopeful that there are many leaders and many great people within organizations who will fight back against this, think about creative solutions, and protect research that will change the world for the better.
What are the main lessons you’ve learned about DEIA in scholarly communications and what do you see as the biggest challenges and opportunities?
In the last ten years, DEIA has become a key part of our discourse, which is positive. We’re talking about it in a way we never have before, whether we’re discussing censorship, global parity in open business models, or inclusive editorship and authorship. However, the pace is slow, and despite industry-wide initiatives, collaboration across the industry still doesn’t lead to tangible change. I think this has been highlighted most recently through the ringing silence across scholarly publishing following the attacks on DEIA we just spoke about. This was a perfect opportunity to come together to support our communities and resist censorship. I don’t see this as being political; I see it as standing up for the very fabric of our industry. We have a responsibility to make publishing and the academic ecosystem representative, supportive, and equitable for all.
With that in mind, there’s still a balance to be found between “opinion” and “fact” in such a complex and changing political and socioeconomic landscape. We still have to uphold the integrity of the academic record, particularly as AI starts to learn from the academic corpus. That’s a whole new DEIA lens to consider.
Despite this, what I have learned is that putting DEIA at the heart of what you do and who you are creates better outcomes for all. Removing barriers and creating an equitable playing field is just a common sense business strategy. People might not remember when you did turn up, but they’ll definitely remember when you didn’t.
