An increased awareness of systemic bias in institutions requires that we all examine the practices in which we participate. Around the turn of 2020, the Journal of Biogeography (JBI) began considering initiatives to promote opportunities for researchers currently underrepresented in biogeography, a discussion that continues today, and will go on for some time yet. A key part of this discussion is transparency in the current state of imbalance, inequity, and exclusion and changes in their status through time to hold ourselves accountable and ensure we are making progress. In November 2020, therefore, we began this process of transparency and accountability, with JBI‘s first Annual Report on Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion. Here, we present the second Annual Report on Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion.
Approach & results for 2021: There are many dimensions to diversity, and currently we are able to access information on only a subset of these, with some degree of accuracy, for a subset of roles within the publishing ecosystem. These data come from recent efforts by Wiley to understand aspects of gender diversity of authors and reviewers and editors that are still in flux (additional instruments for this including options for self-identification are in development), from our abilities to retrieve geographic diversity in author submissions and publications in ScholarOne and the analytics behind this blog, as well as from a small number of public documents on the journal website and a diversity questionnaire completed by authors of blog posts. Wiley are currently investigating new ways to more accurately collect and report on gender diversity. As a result, we report on aspects currently accessible and commit to continuing to improving our information systems in the coming years.
Editorial Board:
Associate Editors:
Current board composition: 17 women, 38 men. (Self-reported preferred pronouns: 65% he/him, 30% she/her, 6% other [31% reporting])
New members added in 2020: 3 women, 3 men.
Total new invitations in 2020: 8 women, 5 men.
Geographic diversity by institutional location: 26 countries (Australia 4, Austria 2, Belgium 2, Brazil 2, Chile 1, China 3, Cyprus 1, Denmark 1, Finland 1, France 3, Germany 2, Greece 1, India 1, Israel 1, Italy 1, Japan 2, Mexico 2, Netherlands 2, New Zealand 1, Northern Ireland 1, Norway 1, Poland 1, South Africa 3, Spain 3, UK 5, USA 8)
Deputy Editors-in-Chief:
Current board composition: 3 women, 3 men. (Self-reported preferred pronouns: 33% he/him, 67% she/her [50% reporting])
New members added in 2020: 2 women (1 woman completed her tenure).
Geographic diversity by institutional location: 6 countries (France, Germany, Portugal, New Zealand, UK, USA)
Editor-in-Chief:
Current board composition: 1, man.
Geographic diversity by institutional location: USA
Social Media Editors:
WeChat: 1, man.
Blog, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter: 1 woman, 1 man.
Geographic diversity by institutional location: 3 countries (Australia, Canada, China)
Cultural/national identity: Chinese, Chinese-European, South American.
Editorial Academy:
Current board composition: 6 women, 6 men.
New members added in 2021: 3 women, 3 men.
Total new invitations in 2021: 3 women, 3 men.
Geographic diversity by institutional location: 7 countries (Australia, Estonia, Finland 2, Germany 2, Sweden, UK 2, USA 3)
Cultural/national identity: Brazil, China, Finland, Germany (2), Italy, Mozambique, Portugal (2), Russia, New Zealand, United Kingdom.
Guest Editors (2 special issues):
Current composition: 6 women, 3 men.
Geographic diversity by institutional location: 5 countries (Brazil, Canada, Cyprus, Mexico, USA 7)
Reviewers:
Wiley are currently investigating new ways to more accurately collect and report on gender diversity. As such, these data are currently unavailable for 2020-2021, but will be updated when available.
Authors:
Gender diversity:
Wiley are currently investigating new ways to more accurately collect and report on gender diversity. As such, this data is currently unavailable for 2020-2021, but will be updated when available.
Geographic diversity:
.
(Above) The geographic sources, by lead author institute, of papers published in JBI
between October 2020 – September 2021 (Vol 47 Issues 10-12 and Vol 48 Issues 1-9). Countries at frequencies lower than Norway include Poland, Cyprus, Netherlands, Israel, Indonesia, India, Slovenia, Taiwan, Denmark, Portugal, Croatia, Serbia, and Sweden.*
Initiatives:
In 2021, JBI continued three initiatives to advance principles consistent with the journal’s Equity, Diversity & Inclusion statement (see “Other” below).
Editorial Academy:
See above.
Small Grants for Global Colloquia in Biogeography:
One awarded. The composition of the organizing team is as follows: 5 women, 5 men
Career stages: 1 PhD student, 2 post-doctoral researchers, 2 independent research fellows, 2 assistant profs, 1 associate prof, and 1 full prof
Geographic diversity by institutional location: Argentina, Finland, France, Norway, UK 5, USA.
JBI Awards for Innovation:
In progress (to be reported in 2022).
In addition, Journal of Biogeography published a virtual issue: Women in Biogeography.
Blog:
Early Career Researcher features (as of mid-October 2020 to end-September 2021):
25 women, 33 men
19 PhD, 36 postdoc, 3 other [industry, masters, postdoc equivalent]
Readership (year ending 02 October 2021, ordered by decreasing number of views):
135 countries (United States, Brazil, Australia, China, Spain, Germany, Mexico, United Kingdom, India, France, Canada, Colombia, Belgium, Italy, Japan, South Africa, Netherlands, Czech Republic, Switzerland, Sweden, Indonesia, Portugal, Finland, Ireland, Austria, Chile, New Zealand, Ecuador, Argentina, Poland, Denmark, Taiwan, Norway, Thailand, Hong Kong SAR China, Estonia, Réunion, Peru, Singapore, Turkey, South Korea, Philippines, Mozambique, Greece, Uruguay, Nepal, Israel, Russia, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Costa Rica, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Venezuela, Cyprus, Romania, Guatemala, Algeria, Ukraine, Luxembourg, Nigeria, Pakistan, Hungary, Bangladesh, Andorra, Slovenia, Vietnam, Sudan, Iceland, Benin, Panama, Kenya, Croatia, Madagascar, Bolivia, Ethiopia, Puerto Rico, European Union, Lithuania, Morocco, Myanmar (Burma), Cameroon, Slovakia, Dominican Republic, Egypt, Zimbabwe, Oman, Ghana, Mauritius, Congo – Brazzaville, Honduras, Paraguay, Guam, Fiji, Côte d’Ivoire, Serbia, Kuwait, Bulgaria, Tanzania, Latvia, Laos, Papua New Guinea, Seychelles, Macau SAR China, Trinidad & Tobago, Armenia, Montenegro, Belarus, Angola, Bahrain, Swaziland, Jordan, New Caledonia, Uganda, Malawi, Senegal, Macedonia, Botswana, El Salvador, Brunei, Namibia, Cuba, Burkina Faso, Gabon, Rwanda, Qatar, Jamaica, Antarctica, Syria, American Samoa, U.S. Virgin Islands, Congo – Kinshasa, Togo, Tunisia, Bermuda).
Number of page views of the JBI blog by country (year ending 02 October 2021).
Other:
JBI‘s Equity, Diversity & Inclusion statements can be found here and here (Section 5, bottom) and are designed specifically to address the need for inclusion to start with the earliest planning stages of research. A version of this statement also is included in JBI‘s initiatives (see above) that are explicitly intended to promote gender and geographic diversity among early career biogeographers.
Wiley is a signatory of the Joint Commitment for Action on Inclusion and Diversity in Publishing. link
Action items for 2022:
Growing from these initial data and experiences over the past year, we identify several goals on which we aim to work in the coming year. We do not consider this a complete list, nor a list of all that needs to be done. Goals for 2022 include:
To increase geographic diversity among all of the journal’s constituencies: authors, editors, readers, reviewers.*
To increase gender diversity among all of the journal’s constituencies.
To increase gender diversity in leadership positions.
To be sensitive to workload.
To achieve gender and geographic representation in initiatives.
To continue special or virtual issues focusing on diversity in biogeography.
With Wiley, to implement a framework for better assessing diversity in submission and publication, such as improved analytics of manuscript metadata and post-decision information gathering from all authors.
Likewise, to implement a framework for assessing diversity in invitations to review cf. acceptances and submissions of reviews.
To be responsive to Wiley’s recently formed DE&I advisory board which is creating a framework that could be applied to numerous journals across disciplines.
*In the current report, geographic location of current institution is used as one dimension of geographic diversity in biogeography for which data currently are accessible. Action items for 2021 (above) include developing infrastructure for understanding ethnicity, nationality, cultural identify, country of origin.
15 December 2021