Conference: Equity and Inclusion in Open Access Publishing: Workshop to explore barriers and solutions

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Three significant and intertwined changes in the ecological research landscape are occurring: new commitments to removing barriers that exclude scientists of diverse backgrounds, availability of open data streams, and a shift towards Open Access (OA) publishing through author-pays models. Given the importance of scholarly publishing in hiring and promotion, barriers to publishing could undermine or negate other interventions and programs to recruit and retain diverse scholars in environmental biology. Therefore, the Ecological Society of America (ESA) proposes a community survey and a workshop to explore barriers to full participation of a wide diversity of Ecology and Environmental Biology scientists in publishing research, with particular attention to potential impacts of the shift to Open Access publishing models. The objectives of this workshop and community survey are to 1) raise awareness of the intersection between open science and diversity, equity, and inclusion, 2) evaluate the current state of diversity, equity, and inclusion in publishing (including identifying data gaps), 3) gather data about potential barriers to publishing Open Access, and 4) provide a forum for stakeholders to identify solutions to potential barriers. The goals of the workshop are to convene society and publishing leaders to examine the current status of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the publishing process, to explore rising concerns that transitioning to Open Access could exacerbate inequalities in scholarly publishing and to discuss strategies to alleviate financial burden associated with publishing. This workshop will have significant broader impact on the Ecology and Environmental Biology community by 1) Facilitating networking and conversation around diversity, equity, and inclusion in publishing in the Ecology and Environmental Biology society and publishing leaders, 2) Providing additional data on the impact of author publishing charges and how the charges affect authors’ decisions on where and when to publish, 3) Identifying best practices and pitfalls when moving towards fully Open Access publishing models, and 4) Identifying characteristics of different funding models to support authors publishing Open Access articles.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.