Should publishers use online submission systems to harvest authors’ responses to diversity, equity and inclusion?

Abstract

As companies advance policies pertaining to social reform, including diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), the issue of protocol, and how those objectives are being achieved, invites debate. In particular, methods that infringe on authors’ rights or freedoms need to be scrutinized. Online submission systems (OSSs) are typically – and often exclusively – used by authors for submitting their papers. The present paper documents the use of OSSs by 33 journals published by Elsevier to harvest authors’ responses to issues and policies related to DEI. This is achieved via a mandatory survey prior to accessing the OSS. Here, a major concern is the violation of authors’ rights due to the presence of a barrier to entry to the OSS, which prevents them from submitting a paper and thus contravenes a core principle of DEI. Results of an investigation into the transparency of Elsevier’s 33 journals with regard to the same DEI principles that they require of their contributing authors revealed four main findings with regard to the gender diversity of their editorial boards: 1) in only six journals (18%) did 100% of the editors indicate their gender; 2) in 14 journals (42%), the editorial board page of the journal did not carry any statistics related to gender; 3) in five journals (15%), some editors preferred not to disclose their gender (in the case of Discourse, Context & Media, 33% of the responding editors preferred not to disclose their gender); 4) in all journals for which gender statistics were supplied (19, or 58%), none of the responding editors indicated a “non-binary or gender diverse” status. This paper suggests that Elsevier needs to revisit and reform its DEI policies related to editorial boards, as well as to rethink the current mandatory survey for authors using its journals’ OSSs.