Dear Readers,
If you have been following one of our foci this year, you will have noticed an explicit commitment to diversity and inclusivity as a COPE theme. As a strategic goal of our last plan, we interpret this commitment broadly, including geographic diversity, gender diversity, issues of racial and ethnic diversity, ableism and breadth across the disciplinary and interdisciplinary fields of scholarly publishing.
This issue of Digest focuses on some of our activities with respect to our members in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (AHSS). Two years ago, COPE established a subcommittee on AHSS to review our membership and our services across these disciplines. Anecdotally and based on reflections from some of our members, we knew that these disciplines articulate different needs than the biomedical and other science-based disciplines which represent a larger share of COPE members.
The survey which is discussed in this issue confirms some of our assumptions and brings new insights in how best to serve our AHSS members. While this a small sample we hope you will be interested in the findings. Currently, we are underrepresented by members in AHSS disciplines. COPE will grow our membership within these disciplines as we strive to meet the specific issues in publication ethics in these fields.
We would like to remind you of the upcoming European Seminar which will be held on the 23rd of September in Leiden, the Netherlands. The seminar will focus on a number of current issues that editors and publishers are dealing with and should be of interest to many of our members. Please see a description of the sessions for the day. We look forward to seeing many of our European colleagues there.
Best wishes,
COPE Chair Deborah Poff