Diversity data collection from our journals communities
We're improving the way we collect gender information and starting to collect data on race and ethnicity, from our journal authors, reviewers and editors
At the Royal Society of Chemistry, we believe that chemistry should be for everyone. Research shows that a broad range of perspectives lead to better science. Collecting data is important because it gives us a richer understanding of the diversity of our community. With a broad spectrum of data, we can better address barriers and make our products, services and activities as inclusive as they should be.
That’s why, from 27 June 2023, we will start collecting race and ethnicity data, and update the way we collect data about gender identity, from our authors, reviewers and editors, via our ScholarOne submission and peer review system.
As you may know, since December 2020 we have enabled our authors, reviewers and editors to self-report their gender within ScholarOne. That has given us invaluable information about the gender balance of our publishing community, which will be reported publicly in the forthcoming RSC Diversity Data Report, and which we will use to inform our future actions on improving gender representation among our authors and reviewers.
For the past two and a half years, we have been leading a cross-publisher initiative called the Joint commitment for action on inclusion and diversity in publishing, which brings together over 50 publishing organisations to accelerate progress on inclusion and diversity in publishing. Collectively, that group has developed a set of recommended questions for the collection of gender identity and race and ethnicity data, and has been working with major peer review system providers to develop the functionality to collect demographic data in a way that prioritises the privacy and security of such potentially sensitive information.
We will now start making use of that new ScholarOne functionality to improve the way we collect gender information and to start collecting data on race and ethnicity. We will also continue to work with ScholarOne and other publishers through the Joint Commitment initiative to enable meaningful reporting on the data – in an appropriately aggregated and anonymised way.
Data collection and further information
We have updated the data collection information on our journals pages to reflect this change, adding a new FAQ section with more detailed information. If you would like further information on this initiative or our Joint Commitment work, please use the contact form on the left of this page.
Contact us
- Tel:
- +44 (0) 1223 432203
- Email:
- Global inclusion