Analysis and news
Malicious mislabelling at the expense of embracing DEI Rightly so, diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) are at the forefront of every conversation in higher education and academia, writes Nick Newcomer
The concept of diversity, equity and inclusion includes institutions touting their support for DEI as well as publishers discussing how to create a more equitable landscape for all researchers and support libraries in providing rich, diverse content. Unfortunately, for so many years, DEI has not been prioritised in the academic community, and through the current standards of scholarly publishing the entire landscape has been created through a euro-centric lens. As part of a medium- sized international independent publisher, I have seen this lens suppress not only under-represented researchers but stifle the distribution of quality research due to biases and discrimination in the industry. While many are discussing how to
increase diversity in publishing by monitoring key demographics, bringing more racial and gender diversity into publishing houses, and creating coalitions
“I would like to inform, educate and call for a new, higher standard of publishing”
to educate on these topics, it is important to review the current industry standards that are collectively holding us back from achieving true diversity. For hundreds of years, the standards of ‘quality, essential research’ has created a ‘boys’ club’ of who can get the highest citation impact, mislabelled and criticised publishers who stand outside of the Big Five, and put immense pressure on libraries. Additionally, it has severely limited the English-as-a- second language academics, early career researchers and international researchers. Through this article, I would like to inform,
educate and call for a new, higher standard of publishing. My goal is to share with you all the hinderances we, as a publisher, have faced in our efforts to historically support international and underrepresented researchers. While this editorial is just one
26 Research Information October/November 2021
publisher’s perspective, my hope is that the overall industry continually questions and rethinks what resources and publishers should be supported through our quest of DEI.
If you publish research from early career academicians or research from developing countries, you are a rogue and vanity press For context, IGI Global has embraced the concept of DEI through international perspectives since the inception of the company, in 1988. At the time, most major academic publishing houses were not interested in investing in small-run monographs in research areas that were not trending in the field of research. During our inception, we actively sought out these concepts and focused on driving international perspectives in all our titles. Through this mission and mindset, now we have published with more than 150,000 researchers, with 40 per cent of our contributors hailing from non-Western countries. With a double-blind peer review process and strict ethical guidelines (backed by the Committee on Publication Ethics), many now see these statistics as a positive. However, due to our historic approach
to collaborating with researchers from various countries and expanding publishing opportunities and resources to developing nations, we have received criticism for the quality of our content and been critiqued by librarians, institutions and others in the academic community. This includes the labels of being a write-only, rogue and vanity publisher.
This mislabelling of the ‘write-only’ originates from two blog posts, one that was written in 2007, by Dr Debora Weber- Wulff, from the University of Applied Science at HTW Berlin, Germany, and the other written by Dr Ian Bogost, from Georgia Tech University, USA, in 2008. In Dr Weber-Wulff’s personal blog, she reviews IGI Global’s website and determines that: ‘The authors do seem to exist; however, they teach at minor schools. The business model seems to be: young academic writes book, publishes here, library purchases overpriced book, academic now has a
book published, gets a new job at another university, has library there purchase book, and so on.’ (Weber-Wulff 2007, par. 7). Unfortunately, these conclusions are all
uninformed (view our full piece reviewing this blog post at:
bit.ly/3yw28Uz). However, the larger issue that this presents is the element of the editors coming from ‘minor schools’ or early career researchers. This leads to questions on what the overall standard is in the industry of who should be published. This is further perpetuated by Dr Bogost’s blog, in which he notes that ‘They [IGI Global] capture and feed on fragile individuals in order to advance their kind as a whole’ (Bogost, 2008, par. 6). Through this mindset, it perpetuates the
industry standard that those who are not publishing with specific publishers and do not come from prestigious institutions are seen in a negative light. One comment responding to Bogost’s blog describes this ‘standard’ well by saying: ‘Aspects of academic arrogance, such as the generalised attacks on a press based on citation numbers and its manner of soliciting contributions, reveal one of the fundamental and persistent problems with academia: its inability to abandon forms of ivory tower mentality’ (G, 2010). Due to commentary from researchers
like Bogost, we are now seeing a troubling trend where the industry has been adopting the ‘ivory tower mentality’. Where regardless of the facts that IGI Global is a full member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and all of our titles are fully double-blind peer-reviewed, we are seen as not credible due to the opinions of a few scholars. The reality is that many of our processes
are ahead of the industry, in terms of monitoring the publishing process and rigour, but that is overshadowed by the prejudices against us a publisher or our network of 150,000+ academicians and researchers. What is more alarming is that these opinion-based blog posts are being quoted as factual, in articles including ‘The false academy: predatory publishing in science and bioethics’, by Stefan Eriksson, from Uppsala University, Sweden, and Gert Helgesson, from Karolinska Institutet,
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