The pandemic cannot be allowed to hobble women’s research careers

The pandemic has underlined and exacerbated the inequalities that continue to exist in research ecosystems, as well as in society more generally. This is a critical blow when we consider that innovation happens best when diverse perspectives come together, and societal progress depends on our ability to harness the contributions of great minds.

Elsevier’s 2020 report “The researcher journey through a gender lens” showed that while overall representation of women in research has increased, substantial inequality remains in terms of output, citations, awarded grants and research collaborations. Subsequent studies revealed that women researchers were further disadvantaged during the pandemic, with a significant decrease in their paper outputs compared with their male counterparts. This has long-term implications of lower research output, fewer collaborations and slower career progression among women in research.

So what can be done to limit the damage? The report mentioned above was one of a series that arose from the inferred gender disambiguation methodology for authors that we at Elsevier have applied since 2015, in conjunction with our Scopus database of publication outputs, citations, awarded grants and collaborations. These have been used by institutional decision-makers to deepen understanding of the role gender plays in research and to support critical interventions. It is crucial that we retain and enhance this evidence-based approach to equality.

During the pandemic, we intensified our corporate focus on supporting the communities we serve and on strengthening our commitments to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). A key pillar of this is advancing inclusion and diversity – both internally and externally – in the research community.

Over the years, initiatives such as the international Gender Summits have brought inspiration and exchange, but the real game changer has been the leadership vision, commitment and accountability to drive change. A change-maker needs a clear set of targets, and while we were already working on areas such as the diversity of editorial board members of our journals and conference speakers, it made a huge difference to have an official mandate and internal cohesion to move beyond aspirational goals.

Fresh eyes and expertise are also crucial for any organisation wanting to make change happen. Hence, in addition to establishing a grass-roots Gender Equity Taskforce within Elsevier, we also launched, in early 2020, our Inclusion and Diversity (I&D) Advisory Board. This consists of distinguished academic leaders from across different sectors and regions, who have served as coaches, critics, cheerleaders and, above all, catalysts for change.

With their help, we have identified three key areas where we can make a real difference. The first is improving the gender, racial and geographical diversity and inclusion of people participating in academic research and publishing. The second is setting standards and best practices for incorporating I&D principles into research itself. The third is driving I&D initiatives that impact the academic career progression of under-represented groups.

We are already seeing results. During 2021, Elsevier increased female representation on editorial boards of proprietary journals from 16 to 24 per cent. Women’s participation in The Lancet group’s international advisory boards rose from 30 per cent in early 2019 to 53 per cent, and for Cell Press journals it rose to 39 per cent.

We have also developed a Gender Diversity Indicator for more than 770 journals to increase transparency of board participation, and we are aiming to double that number in 2022. The proportion of speakers at our conferences who are women has increased from 15 per cent in 2015 to 39 per cent by 2021.

As for career progression, Elsevier has provided the Elsevier Foundation with new funding for a series of targeted, localised and intersectional partnerships to nurture early career researchers’ ability to secure funding, expand their networks, gain recognition and increase representation in their field. This brings our total amount of annual investment in career progression for women researchers and underrepresented groups to more than $500,000 (£401,000).

Establishing and sharing these targets publicly are critical, both for our own accountability and for developing best practices across the research sector. In March, we shared our I&D Advisory Board report, which charts our progress across our focus areas and sets out the studies, analytics and approaches we have undertaken over the past two years.

Clearly, inclusion and diversity make for a complex challenge. It requires all actors, whether publishers, employers or policymakers, to work together to establish key principles and practices. We have fully endorsed the critical work of the Joint Commitment for Action on Inclusion and Diversity in Publishing, established in 2021 by the Royal Society of Chemistry and more than 50 like-minded publishers. We were particularly proud to help develop self-reporting schema for gender identity and race and ethnic origins, and to see it endorsed across the consortium.

And while gender has dominated our efforts in recent years, intersectionality is a growing focus. As our CEO, Kumsal Bayazit, says: “Actions that focus on multiple aspects of diversity drive change more effectively by including everybody.” This is what we are committed to.

Ylann Schemm is vice-president for corporate responsibility and director of the Elsevier Foundation, and Holly J. Falk-Krzesinski is vice-president for research intelligence at Elsevier. They are co-chairs of Elsevier’s Gender Equity Taskforce.