The Minimum Standards for Scholarly Publishing

We acknowledge that biases exist in scholarly publishing and we commit to scrutinising our own processes to minimize these. We are openly pooling our resources, expertise and insight to accelerate research culture change.

Editorial board members do not participate in the review of their own manuscripts, and the article proportion of editorial board members published in the journal is not more than one quarter.

We believe the minimum standards will:

• enable senior leaders in publishing, editorial decision makers (which may involve staff or academics) and editorial boards to evaluate their performance and progress on inclusion and diversity within their organizations and publications;
• enable editorial decision makers, authors, and reviewers to identify and take achievable, specific actions to improve inclusion and diversity in scholarly publishing.

Our list of minimum standards

1. Ensure inclusion and diversity are integrated into publishing activities and strategic planning.

2. Work to understand the demographic diversity of authors, editorial decision makers and reviewers, such as gender, geography and ethnicity data.

3. Acknowledge the barriers within publishing which authors, editorial decision makers and reviewers from under-represented communities experience and take actions to address them.

4. Define and communicate the specific responsibilities authors, editorial decision makers, reviewers and staff members have towards inclusion and diversity.

5. Review and revise as appropriate the appointment process for editors and editorial boards to capture the widest talent pool possible.