Day/Time: Thursday, May 19, 1:15pm – 2:15pm
Presenters
- Kate Shuttleworth, Public Knowledge Project and Simon Fraser University
- Amanda Stevens, Public Knowledge Project
- Patricia Mangahis, Public Knowledge Project
Description
The Public Knowledge Project (PKP) was started in 1998 to equalize access to scholarly research and has since succeeded in enabling the publication of over 25,000 journals worldwide, most of which are open access and many of which are located in the global south. However, when anti-black racism came to the forefront of public discourse in 2020, PKP looked internally and realized that in other ways it reproduces and enforces the structural inequities of the Canadian scholarly publishing community and IT industry.
PKP immediately formed an internal Equity and Inclusion Team (EI Team) to reflect on our practices and drive changes that address inequities and racial injustice. Our goal is to improve organizational transparency and prioritize the inclusion and experiences of members of equity-deserving groups within PKP, its decision-making processes and leadership, and its community.
We will present on the Team’s various initiatives, including a staff survey to assess demographics and experiences, recommendations to increase employment equity and organizational transparency, a community Code of Conduct, and hiring practices to increase diversity. We’ll discuss the outcomes of our work so far, our goals for the future, challenges encountered, and how we can direct this work to increase PKP’s accountability and strengthen our contribution to the global scholarly publishing community.
We’ll call on other presenters and perspective to generate a discussion around
+ the ways our individual lived experiences and positionalities intersect with and impact our approach to this work
+ opportunities for further engagement with this work and future initiatives to undertake
+ challenges of assessing the impact of of our efforts to measure structural change
+ barriers encountered and gaps that remain to be addressed through ongoing commitments to dismantling structural inequities
Attendees will be invited to share their own initiatives, success, experiences, and challenges in these areas via polls, the chat box, and online brainstorming tools.