Equitable representation in awards and recognition in scholarly publishing: Current challenges and the path ahead

Awards are an important mechanism of recognition that can signify inclusivity or exclusivity and impact careers. More women were selected by publishing organizations for awards overall yet appeared underrecognized in a predominantly women‐employed workforce. Award programs showed a preference for US‐based awardees despite the global representation of individuals' localities. To build equity in awards programs, organizations are encouraged to appoint diverse committees, promote transparency and publicize awards in historically excluded communities.


INTRODUCTION
The scholarly publishing ecosystem is considered to be a global industry, but recent surveys conducted in 2018 and 2019 of the demographics of the industry have revealed some defining characteristics (Lee and Low Books, 2020;Taylor et al., 2020;The Publishers Association, 2020). From these surveys, we learn that the industry is dominated by women, making up 68.6% to 76% of the workforce. In addition, all three surveys reflect an industry that is lacking in ethnic diversity, with 76% to 85.8% of the respondents self-identifying as White. The Taylor et al. (2020) survey also collected information on disability and location; respondents overwhelmingly reported no disabilities 89%, and were primarily located in Europe (27%) and North America (62%).
Interestingly, given the predominance of women in the broader scholarly publishing workforce, the demographics of the senior and executive managers are striking (Roberts, 2021;Taylor et al., 2020). Overall, the leadership is more male, older, more White, more likely to have a Master's degree or higher, to have fewer caregiving responsibilities, and to have higher pay than the broader workforce (Taylor et al., 2020).
To create a truly diverse, equitable and inclusive industry, it has been proposed that strategies to recruit a diverse and broader workforce need to be supported by a sustained effort to retain and support historically excluded groups. One mechanism to consider in this context is how individuals feel valued by their organization and the community as a whole. Compensation and internal recognition within the organization are key aspects of this (Taylor et al., 2020); however, an additional mechanism to consider is how the scholarly publishing industry bestows awards and prizes. These professional awards are established mechanisms of recognition of professional achievement and can be influential in career advancement (Lincoln et al., 2012). These awards tend to be more likely to be presented to individuals with an established reputation, known as the 'Matthew Effect' (Merton, 1968). In addition, a 'Matilda Effect' has been seen whereby the achievements of women are not recognized in the same way as those of men (Lincoln et al., 2012;Rossiter, 1993).
In this case study, we explore the current trends in imparting awards and recognition in selected organizations in the scholarly publishing industry and make recommendations to embrace diversity for a more equitable publishing ecosystem. In a collaborative effort, members of the Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP)'s Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility (DEIA) Committee began the work of analysing statistics related to various professional awards. Input was also received from external stakeholders to enhance the content. Drawing on inspiration from science, technology, engineering, medicine (STEM) and related fields, the authors propose guidelines and recommendations for various nominating committees to not only diversify their own composition but also to adopt inclusive and equitable criteria for inclusive and equitable recognition of eligible candidates.

METHODS
Publicly available data on awards given out to society members and constituents over the last two decades were assessed for five scholarly publishing organizations: SSP, Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP), International Society of Managing and Technical Editors (ISMTE), Council of Science Editors (CSE) and American Library Association (ALA). Our sample was composed of member organizations where professionals employed in the scholarly publishing fields would be eligible to receive recognition. The organizations were selected to reflect publishers, editors and librarian communities but were limited to those centred in Europe and North America owing to the availability of data from these organizations. This is an important limitation of this assessment and reflects the historical domination of globally recognized scholarly publishing organizations in these regions. Across all data sets, the authors focused on individual achievement awards given for accomplishments in broad rather than specific areas and excluded awards given by societies on an inconsistent basis; data were collected and assessed for awards up to 15 June 2022 (Chauhan et al., 2022)   Award. We acknowledge that the awards selected for this case study as representative of broad achievement were a subsample of awards given by the organizations and that results might differ with a more exhaustive analysis of bestowed awards.
The focus was on assessment of awardee geographical location and gender because these data were most readily available.
Gender was assigned based on pronouns used in the award announcements, or on the information made available by the award winners online. Geographical location was assigned based on the location of the awardee at the present time, unless the location was included in the announcement. The raw data were shared with each organization and they were asked for verification of accuracy and any input or additional information to be shared. Data for any other protected characteristics are not presented here, and the results of this assessment do not reflect a full assessment of the demographic representation of award winners. Anonymized data from the assessment has been made available (Chauhan et al., 2022).

RESULTS
Considering the geographic distribution of the awardees from the broad scholarly publishing organizations included in our sample (SSP, ALPSP, CSE and ISMTE), there is a strong predominance of individuals located in the United States (Fig. 1). Strikingly, North America-based individuals received 87% of the awards considered in this assessment. Individuals based in the United Kingdom received a further 11% of the awards, with the rest of the world collectively receiving just 2% of the awards considered. Data are not available for the geographic locations of members in the organizations, and this assessment is further complicated by some organizations having individual members (e.g., SSP, ISMTE and CSE) and ALPSP operating an organizational member model. Therefore, we consider the broader geographic distribution of the scholarly publishing community, and the 87% of awardees based in North America is considerably higher than the 62% of survey respondents who were based there (Spilka et al., 2019). Europe accounted for 27% of survey respondents (Spilka et al., 2019), and 12% of the awardees were based in Europe in the considered sample set.
In the past 20 years, more women than men overall have been recognized with awards, with 55% women, and 45% men being recognized in this way. This varied by organization, with ISMTE having the highest proportion of women awardees at 69%, and ALPSP with the lowest at 41%. SSP and ISMTE both reported a predominantly female membership ( Fig. 2; data not shown, other societies' data not reported), and overall as previously noted the industry is predominantly employing women with them making up 76% of survey respondents (Taylor et al., 2020). Yet, surprisingly, awards have been distributed to women at a lower proportion than would be expected based on the demographics of senior leaders as well, with 65% of senior/executive managers being women (Taylor et al., 2020).  protected characteristics. Awards programs are encouraged to collect consented, anonymized identity/demographic information about nominated candidates and award winners encompassing race/ethnicity, gender identity, disability status and other characteristics to further make this process inclusive and equitable and to be able to track positive progress over the years. In turn, we hope future studies will be able to systematically evaluate the full representation of identity attributes across awards programs in publishing as well as other industries. This case study offers several recommendations to counter omission and underrepresentation of historically excluded communities from these career-enhancing opportunities.

Recommendations
Given the lack of representation of the broader demographics of the community in the awards and recognition processes within scholarly publishing, we make a number of recommendations, adapted in part from the American Statistical Association guidelines (American Statistical Association, 2018; Fig. 3).
In the first instance, consider the make-up of the selection committee and ensure diverse representation. Then, the nomination and evaluation process should be standardized, transparent and inclusive, which should include publicizing the awards to historically excluded communities and an option to self-nominate. In addition, the language describing the nominations process should be inclusive and bias free. To monitor the impact of change, it is important to collect demographic data from the broader community eligible for the awards, the nominated parties and the awardees. This collection must be conducted in a secure and fully consented manner. Finally, it is necessary to use this information to periodically review these practices to ensure that the process is following the current best practice.

CONCLUSIONS
Taken together, we hope that the results shared in this case study as well as the recommendations, as outlined in the infographic (Fig. 3), may form a framework on which to build inclusive and equitable representation in awards and recognition.