Michiel Kolman, Chair of the IPA's Inclusive Publishing and Literacy Committee spoke to Dan Conway, CEO of the Publishers Association (UK) about their Inclusivity Action Plan and their past work on diversity and inclusion. 

In September, one of the most significant book events in Brazil took place, the Rio de Janeiro Book Fair (Bienal do Livro do Rio de Janeiro), with record-breaking numbers of attendees and sales, and for the first time, featuring an international Summit for the publishing industry.

The 8 September marks UNESCO’s World Literacy Day. The theme chosen by UNESCO for this year is Promoting literacy for a world in transition: Building the foundation for sustainable and peaceful societies. Literacy is the foundation for sustainable and peaceful societies.

Earlier this month, the Pride season arrived in my hometown Amsterdam where Elsevier is also headquartered. Two weeks of events to celebrate Pride but also a moment of protest as the LGBTIQ+ community is increasingly under attack globally. We started with a Pride Walk where many Elsevier colleagues joined. Earlier this month we participated in the London Pride Parade and our CEO Kumsal Bayazit also took part. Visibility is important, today more so than ever before. 

Books are playing a major role in spreading ideas, enriching the culture and turning our democracies into flourishing debated places. No matter whether they are used to escape from our reality or to dive into it, access to books remains a fundamental human right. This right is reinforced by the application of the European Accessibility Act that urges the ebooks ecosystem to comply with accessibility obligations for products and services. This directive creates an inclusive society by ensuring access to ebooks for all European citizens, regardless of their disabilities.

I write this post while returning home from a board meeting of the Accessible Books Consortium (ABC) and the celebration of the Marrakesh Treaty’s 10^th anniversary at the World Intellectual Property Organization, WIPO, in Geneva.

The Coalition for Diversity and Inclusion in Scholarly Communications (C4DISC) is running the second implementation of the Workplace Equity Survey (2018) . The 2023 survey is now open and is scheduled to close on 17 July 2023. MIchiel Kolman, Chair of the IPA’s Inclusive Publishing and Literacy Committee spoke to Simone Taylor, PhD, Publisher and Chief of Publishing Operations at the American Psychiatric Association about the latest survey.

Michiel Kolman, Chair of the IPA's Inclusive Publishing and Literacy Committee, spoke to Val Garside, Human Resources Director at Penguin Random House UK about their work on diversity and inclusion.

Michiel Kolman, Chair of the IPA's Inclusive Publishing and Literacy Committee, spoke to Jonathan Walker, Vice President for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion for the Association of American Publisher (AAP) about his work.

What a feeling - the exhilaration (and a little relief after chairing the programming committee) – following the end of the 33^rd International Publishers Congress. After nearly 2 years of preparations we had over 600 delegates and speakers registered from 63 countries to Jakarta to discuss, dissect, analyse and celebrate our international publishing sector. 

On 25 March 2022, the Publishers Association in the UK published its latest Diversity survey of the publishing workforce. Michiel Kolman, Chair of the IPA's Inclusive Publishing and Literacy Committee spoke to Dan Conway, the incoming CEO of the Publishers Association in the UK about their longstanding work in this area.

On 11 January a group of University Presses in the UK and Ireland launched EvenUP, a forum for EDI information collection, benchmarking, and training, with the goal of developing and sharing best practices for the recruitment and retention of university press publishers and authors from under-represented groups. Michiel Kolman, Chair of the IPA's Inclusive Publishing and Literacy Committee spoke to a spokesperson for the group about the initiative.

Michiel Kolman, Chair of the IPA's Inclusive Publishing and Literacy Committee talks to author, translator and publisher Lawrence Schimel about his children's books, their reception in different markets and the shared borders of freedom to publish and inclusivity.

Michiel Kolman, Chair of the IPA's Inclusive Publishing and Literacy Committee talks to Yannick Geens about the European project Every Story Matters.

It seems that with each passing day there is yet another climate change crisis dominating our news headlines.  The world’s scientists have declared that we are fast approaching global tipping points where we can still try and minimize the devastating effects of climate change. Yet, time is running out. With a shrinking window of opportunity left to take action, each meeting where world leaders convene is a moment where we can increase our climate commitments and actions.  

SDG Publishers Compact hits its first 100 signatories.

As Chair of the IPA's Inclusive Publishing and Literacy Committee I was delighted to have the opportunity to speak to Peter Dowling, the Immediate Past President of the Publishers Association of New Zealand about their efforts to make their industry more inclusive.

In 2017 the UK Publishers Association launched its Inclusivity Action Plan which was ambitious, comprehensive and not matched by any PA around the world. The UK PA is to be saluted for being a trailblazer in our industry on Diversity & Inclusion (D&I). I was happy to interview the UK PA’s CEO Stephen Lotinga on their D&I plan and its outcomes in 2019.

Two years ago Hugo Setzer asked me to become the IPA’s Presidential Envoy for Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) in our industry. As the term of President Setzer is over my D&I envoy appointment also comes to an end but my work on this topic at IPA is not done. Time for a reflection on the last two years before I look at the future.

So, what has been achieved on the D&I front? First the IPA leadership itself. We certainly saw diversity there! The coming two years the IPA will be under the leadership of President Bodour Al Qasimi, finally a female president again, (too) many years after Ana Maria Cabanellas’ presidency, and the first president from the Middle East. Our new Vice President will be Karine Pansa, so strong female leadership at the top, and certainly ticking the gender diversity box. YS Chi was not long ago the first Asian IPA president and I, as far as I know, the first out president from the LGBTQ community. The IPA leadership diversity was explored well in the D&I panel for Publishers Without Borders with President Bodour Al Qasimi.

Diversity comes with many different lenses: gender, race & ethnicity, sexuality, disability, age, etc. Many of these lenses on diversity are well covered in the key surveys that track progress (or lack thereof) in diversity in our industry. The leading surveys in our industry are from the UK and the US and show progress on gender, with gender equality at the executive and senior level, but much more to do around race and ethnicity: in the Global North the publishing staff is very ‘white’, much more so than one would expect from the racially mixed cities where most leading publishers are located.  Gender in publishing has been supported enthusiastically by Bodour’s PublisHER movement.

Triggered by the Black Lives Matter movement, race and racism was high on the agenda at this year’s Frankfurt Book Fair’s Diversity Panel, and also at the Beyond the Book Cast on Race and Ethnicity in Academic Publishing with a deep dive on Elsevier. A message of hope where all positive change starts with a meaningful dialogue and therefore lots of emphasis on courageous conversations around race and racism.

We have seen significant progress on LGBTQ rights around the world and that is also reflected on the sexuality lens on diversity. In the above mentioned publishing industry surveys we see that the LGBTQ community is well represented in publishing with many active Pride employee groups across the globe.

As a bonus to our series of posts for Global Goals week, we thought we would concentrate on a specific goal, namely SDG 5: Gender Equality.