How collaboration is advancing disability equity in scholarly communications
By Erin Osborne-Martin,
Wiley Partner Solutions
Wiley Partner Solutions is a proud silver sponsor of the ALPSP Annual Conference and Awards 2023.
According to the World Health Organization, more than 15% of people worldwide have a disability - that’s over 1.1 billion people. And around 80% of disabilities are ‘hidden’, meaning it’s likely you already work with many people with disabilities, without being aware of it. In this context, it’s more important than ever for scholarly communications to be more disability confident.
We need to make sure that everyone has the same access to knowledge and the ability to participate in the scholarly communications process. We also need to include the lived experiences and problem-solving abilities people with disabilities bring to the workplace.
The power of cross-industry collaboration can help. We can create a shared understanding of the challenges faced by people with disabilities and provide best practices and resources for enabling participation.
At Wiley Partner Solutions, collaboration is in our DNA. It’s how we’re helping societies and publishers better serve their communities whilst exceeding their business goals, and it’s built within our team culture. I’m thrilled to be dedicating the time, alongside other publishers, librarians, and researchers, to develop the Equity Toolkit for Disability Inclusion. This new toolkit will:
- Provide a free and interactive online hub
It will give access to high quality, curated resources and best practices, vetted by knowledgeable people. There’ll also be actionable insights for employees with disabilities, managers, and allies working in scholarly communications.
- Evolve over time
The toolkit won’t be static. Continuous updates will be made in response to changing community needs.
- Meet accessibility standards
It will have good search capabilities, topic and format filtering, and a variety of resource types (text, video, audio).
The toolkit isn’t being put together overnight; we’re taking a thoughtful and thorough approach. The Publishing Enabled organization, which I’ve been part of since 2019, is driving the creation of the toolkit in partnership with C4Disc. We’ll be officially announcing the launch of the initial version of the toolkit in the next few months – keep an eye out on LinkedIn and elsewhere.
To learn more at ALPSP 2023, join us at:
📅 Thursday 14 September, 13:15-13:55 (BST)
Speakers: Erin Osborne-Martin (Wiley Partner Solutions), Simon Holt (Elsevier), and Karen Stoll Farrell (Indiana University Bloomington)
Further reading:
- The Coalition for Diversity & Inclusion in Scholarly Communications toolkits for equity
- 10 Quick Wins to Make Your Organization More Disability Inclusive via the Scholarly Kitchen
- Why disability data capture is key to improving inclusion outcomes in scholarly publishing, Learned Publishing, Volume 36, Issue 1, January 2023
- Advancing Accessibility in Scholarly Publishing: Fostering Empathy via the Scholarly Kitchen
About the author
Erin Osborne-Martin is Associate Director, Strategic Analytics at Wiley Partner Solutions, responsible for market insights and data analytics that inform business development strategies. Before that, she worked for over 15 years in society-focused scholarly communications, primarily at the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, where she led the flip of their publishing portfolio to open access. After sustaining a spinal cord injury in 2017, Erin became active in disability advocacy through the BackUp Trust, a spinal injury charity, and Transport for All, a group that works for more accessible public transportation.
About Wiley Partner Solutions
We deliver a broad array of platforms, solutions, and services to help partners curate, collaborate, and accelerate their scholarly outputs while adding value to the wider research ecosystem.
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