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Our Joint commitment for action on inclusion and diversity in scholarly publishing has brought together scholarly publishers from across the globe and a wide range of disciplines. As a group, we acknowledge that biases exist in scholarly publishing and we commit to scrutinising our own processes to minimise these. We are openly pooling our resources, expertise and insight to accelerate research culture change.

One of the initial four aims of the commitment was to produce a set of minimum standards for inclusion and diversity, upon which all members of the publishing community can build to improve inclusion and diversity in the industry. The standards build on our Framework for action in scientific publishing and are intended to help organisations of all sizes.

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 organisations and publications;
  
  
• enable publishers, 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.

6. Publicly report on progress on inclusion and diversity in scholarly publishing at least once a year. 

These minimum standards do not encompass human resource management. The detailed implementation of these standards will vary, and it is expected that every organisation taking part will adopt and implement these minimum standards in good faith. 

Organisations adopting these minimum standards are encouraged to make their commitment to these standards public.