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Working towards a more ethical information community -NISO Plus
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Working towards a more ethical information community -NISO Plus
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Language: EN.
Segment:0 .
REBEKKAH SMITH
ALDRICH: Hi, everyone.
ALDRICH: I'm Rebekkah Smith Aldrich. And I'm pleased to be here on this panel today to talk about ethics and the future of the work that we do in the information profession. My talk today is titled, The Just Transition. We'll talk a bit about the need for the transition, not only of the economy, but our mindsets often, and the work that we do, and how we do the work that we do. And there's no denying at this point, climate change is a major factor in the future of our world.
ALDRICH: And it touches on every aspect of our life and how we do our work, to the point where I think it's safe to say that every job needs to be a climate job in order for us all to thrive in the future. I don't know if anyone else here is a fan of Buckminster Fuller. But when I was thinking about this topic, I grabbed my trusty Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth because for the future to be successful, it really does have to be everybody or is nobody.
ALDRICH: So as we start to think about how we do our work, the frameworks we use to make decisions, both business decisions and output decisions about our work, we have to take a more global view perhaps than we have in the past about decision making, from the very small things we do to the very large things we influence, about how we control the future from our own sphere of influence. And so the work that I've been doing both in New York state with the American Library Association and now with the national program, the Sustainable Libraries Initiative, this is all the work we are trying to put into the idea that we need a methodology for working in our libraries, whether they're public, academic, or school libraries to create better decision making processes that result in more ethical decisions for us as institutions and result for a more ethical and thriving future for the people that we serve.
ALDRICH: So the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change at the United Nations, obviously, a lot of climate scientists talking about the future and how to not only mitigate, but adapt in the face of climate change. Actually in 2014, put forth for ideas that are pretty solid across every sector that we all work in. The idea that to be successful in the face of climate change.
ALDRICH: Again, mitigation and adaptation. We have to focus at the local level. What strategies make sense for the local that we are talking about? The local geography, the local region. How climate change is hitting that area of our world, to make sure that the grassroots energy for problem solving is put towards something that's really close to the heart of the people that are working on it.
ALDRICH: So they're more apt to work together because they have a shared common goal. And we can't do this work without recognizing and valuing diversity and really pushing forth the idea that without empathy, respect, and understanding for our neighbors, regardless of where they come from and what their backgrounds are, we're not going to be successful in the future. So wherever we sit in the information profession, part of our work is to help all be heard through the work that we do in a variety of formats, industries, and sectors.
ALDRICH: So we're really well positioned to be powerful players in this transition to a brighter future for all, which requires an ethical framework for making decisions that might be sitting within your heart, your chest personally. But we need to elevate that and amplify to the institution level of making decisions about the future. And that was part of the push for why the American Library Association adopted sustainability as a core value of the profession.
ALDRICH: This is a very new thing. It's actually only from 2019. But it's a very big deal. It's the entire industry's leadership indicating that sustainability has an urgency tied to it today, to the point where we need to embed it in the thinking of the profession and actually, for the next generation of leaders coming up.
ALDRICH: This resolution that made sustainability a core value of the American Library Association at the same point, in the same resolution, also mandated that accreditation standards for library schools throughout the country now teach sustainability to up and coming leaders in graduate school. So we're really playing the long game here to shift the thinking of folks. And to do that, we need a common vocabulary.
ALDRICH: So ALA actually adopted the triple bottom line definition of sustainability to help folks understand we're not just talking about going green. We're not just talking about the climate as it results and relates to the environment. But that really, as the famous conservationist John Muir said, it's all connected. You tug on one little thread, and you realize it's tied to the economy.
ALDRICH: It's tied to society. It's tied to systemic issues in our countries that have not necessarily benefited all equally. So sustainability is the balance of these three things. Environmentally sound choices that are fair to all involved. So they're socially equitable. And they're economically feasible because we can no longer continue to make decisions that are either not affordable for us locally and not affordable for us globally.
ALDRICH: So this balance of these three items is the goal in decision making, which provides a mindset and a framework for making more ethical decisions as professionals, as institutions, and ultimately, as local and global communities. This is a maybe not a radical idea. But when you understand the radical shift that's necessary to truly make change happen in our world, we understand we're touching on a very delicate topic, which is economics.
ALDRICH: Not necessarily stuff that most of us went to school for, but definitely a system that we participate in that is denigrating the future of our world economically, societally, and from the environmental standpoint. So this phrase of a just transition to an economy and to a way of thinking that is necessary for a brighter future for us all is really where I'm coming from here today, to acknowledge that the game is afoot, right?
ALDRICH: There's policy changes being made. There's efforts by NGOs and governments to change how we think about the future. Transition is coming. But whether or not justice is embedded in that transition of policy, of economics, of how we treat folks in our society, we're not going to be in much of a better spot than we are today.
ALDRICH: So wherever you sit in your organization, the infusion of justice into the work I think is part of that framework that must be at the center and the core of how we make decisions in the future. My hope is that we are looking at something that looks more like what the economist Kate Raworth calls the donut economy, where we respect and build a social foundation that supports all in an equitable way.
ALDRICH: And that we respect the ecological ceiling, which is the reality of the natural world around us. So we stop abusing the natural world around us. And in between those two parameters, we build an economy and a design not to just grow, and grow, and grow without thought, but is designed to help people thrive and really have a future that is not just about surviving whatever's coming next. But that we're not just available to bounce back when another disruption comes, but that we're infusing new and energetic life into the world around us by having our social needs cared for and our ecological ceilings respected.
ALDRICH: So this dashboard that Raworth created really shows how out of whack everything is. And when we think about the enormity of what we're talking about here, and you've got have several more excellent speakers you're hearing from today that are going to talk very specifically about the sustainable development goals from the United Nations. We're talking about everything all at once.
ALDRICH: And that can be overwhelming to the point of paralysis. So as we think about the entire world around us, we have to break it into smaller chunks and really leverage our sphere of influence where we sit to have a positive impact in the decisions that we're making in our professional lives. So this might seem a little out there, radical, but this whole idea of the just transition is really actually very simple.
ALDRICH: We're looking to fight this stuff that's not good for us. We're looking to introduce stuff that is good for us. We're talking about moving decision making power to the folks that it actually impacts. We're looking to build a bigger we, to bring more people into decision making, to make sure we're hearing a diversity of voices and backgrounds to enrich the fabric of decisions that are being made and really change the narrative, change the storyline of where we're going in the future.
ALDRICH: So this concept of a just transition has five key elements to it that might be useful as we think through the future of our institutions and how we do our work. We're obviously advancing ecological restoration as the natural world around us is suffering quite a bit. But democratizing communities and workplaces, so more voices are heard. And driving racial and social equity to make sure that past wrongs are rated, but also to encourage that empathy and I think gap bridging that's necessary to have more people involved in the decisions that affect their lives.
ALDRICH: Thinking very heavily about local. About how do you relocalize where production is happening, how businesses are celebrated. And really speak to the need to grow local economies in a way that understands that how we invest in those might look different than the way we did yesterday. And of course, retaining and restoring cultures and traditions, which is what many of us work in institutions that are really strongly devoted to.
ALDRICH: It's so important to celebrate the wisdom of the past and to learn from that, either whether they be mistakes or achievements that have been made in the past, but to respect what has come before us. So we learn from that and can accelerate changes in conversations that are necessary for the future. So I serve on the board of the Center for the Future of Libraries. And we do trend spotting.
ALDRICH: And this trend is aging obviously. But to me, it's timeless. The idea of collective impact. That we can not longer just make our own decisions in a silo or a vacuum. We need to find like-minded partners and pull together in the same direction. And my hope is that our same direction to simplify a very complex issue.
ALDRICH: And to sum, one goal I think we all need to think about is social cohesion. The more work we do to strength in the fabric of our communities, to help folks understand, respect, and have empathy for one another is going to build the resilience of communities to be able to face whatever disruptions come our way next, which by the very nature of disruption, you never quite know what it's going to look like.
ALDRICH: So just to wrap up here, to make sure I'm fair about the time I'm taking here. I think our institutions need to lead by example, from the inside out. That we make policy decisions that are good for all. That we treat our workers well. That we run our facilities in a way that's ethical and environmentally conscientious. And really serve as a model for others in our community, wherever we may be situated.
ALDRICH: And test for equity. Let's make sure we're actually being equitable and not just focusing on equality, which is not necessarily fair to all involved. And really be honest about impact over intention. All of us have very good intentions, but we rarely take the time to go back and actually look at the impact of the choices that we've made. So we really need to be honest about the measurement of intentionality in the work that we do, to make sure we're having the desired effect in policy decisions and messaging that we're doing in our communities and with our constituents.
ALDRICH: And then of course, working with like minded partners, which is so wonderful. In conferences like this or you get to connect with other people who are thinking like you do and finding allies and work that needs to be done. So just a little commercial here this is the project I'm working on in my spare time. This is the Sustainable Libraries Initiative. If you're interested in learning more about this.
ALDRICH: So what you see on the left is a little workbook. You can download it as a PDF, or it's actually designed as a mobile app you can download for iOS or Android. And work through some of these issues in your own mind to try to extrapolate them into your workplace. We also have an award-winning certification program for public libraries, academic libraries, and school librarians, which is pretty cool. That helps people think through the methodology related to the triple bottom line in working in the library environment.
ALDRICH: So my contact information is here. I'm very active on social media. I love hearing about what folks are up to, so we have more examples of people making good decisions, going in the right direction. And obviously, I write quite a bit on the topic. So you've got some connections to other work that's going on in the field of librarianship when it comes to sustainability.
ALDRICH: But I thank you for the opportunity to be here. And I'm looking forward to hear Dana speak next.
DANA COMPTON: Thanks so much, Rebekkah. All right. I'm going to go ahead and share my screen. All right. Thanks, everybody. I'm Dana Compton from the American Society of Civil Engineers. Really happy to be here today on this panel. So I'm going to talk today about how we at ASCE have incorporated mission-based goals such as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the Climate Change Knowledge Cooperative into our publishing strategy.
DANA COMPTON: So first off, sustainability is a key strategic area for ASCE as an organization. So about a year and a half ago, we appointed a chief sustainability officer. We have a committee on sustainability, as well as one focused on adapting to a changing climate. And we have a sustainability roadmap that frames sustainability as a strategic issue, confronting practicing civil engineers that must be integrated into professional practice.
DANA COMPTON: And the roadmap is really intended to transform the civil engineering's profession with respect to sustainability. The roadmap has four main priorities. And I'm really not going to delve deeply into each of these, except to note that the first three really are more inwardly focused on civil engineering practice, as are most of our society activities and programs.
DANA COMPTON: But what I want to point out is the fourth priority around communication and advocacy. So in this priority, we see that ASCE as an organization assumes a responsibility to communicate the need for transformational change to promote sustainable infrastructure with all stakeholders. So not just our membership, not just our author base, not just our readership, but also the public.
DANA COMPTON: This is a little different from our priorities in other areas of what we do as a society. And ASCE is stating that its end goal for priority four on the sustainability roadmap is for both the membership and the public to demand sustainable infrastructure to enable healthy and thriving communities. Of course, for our members and the public to demand something, they need to understand it ideally.
DANA COMPTON: So I'm going to then drill down a layer into our publication strategy. So our pub strategic plan is organized around six guiding principles. And two of these really dovetail with the ASCE's sustainability goals. So the first is, aptly, sustainability. And for us, this means positioning ourselves as a leading publisher of sustainability content and civil engineering.
DANA COMPTON: So some key goals here include assessing our existing content, developing content collections that raise the profile of the great volume of sustainability-related content we already have, as well as guiding decisions about future acquisitions, ancillary content opportunities, and so forth. The other pertinent principle for this discussion is accessibility. And this encompasses not just the typical technical aspects that you might think of.
DANA COMPTON: But part of what we mean when we talk about accessibility is seeking opportunities to translate technical content for a less technical or a non-technical audience. So this includes things like synopsis statements, videos, infographics, podcasts, the list goes on. We also focus on finding channels to expose that accessible content to audiences outside our typical audience in academia.
DANA COMPTON: Of course, as with anything, there are a number of challenges that we face in achieving these goals. We have a ton of applicable content. At face value, that's really a good thing. But we publish 35 research journals, more than 4,600 articles, year-end notes. A books program with upwards of 50 front list titles per year. Conference proceedings with an additional 4,000 plus papers per year, standards.
DANA COMPTON: A lot of content. And a lot of it has an element of sustainability with sustainable infrastructure in it. So curating that content, ensuring the right bits are discoverable to the right users really is quite difficult. We have made some progress with more granular taxonomy, primarily aligned around the UN SDGs. But in some cases, an automated solution still raises tens of thousands of results.
DANA COMPTON: Adding a human curation element that really uncovers the most relevant, most up to date, highest quality subsections of content means more burden on staff. And honestly, as we're not civil engineers or subject matter experts, we're publishing professionals, it really translates to our overburdened volunteers. Another challenge is, of course, resources to translate very dense technical research content into accessible language and formats.
DANA COMPTON: We simply don't have internal resources to do this. Our team is just over 30 people. And again, not subject matter experts. We have begun relying on authors and editors to provide some practitioner-focused contextualization, but they're not really in a position to translate content for multiple audiences, including the public. So that just hasn't been happening.
DANA COMPTON: And then finally, of course, our reach within publications is primarily to academia, like I mentioned. We do have some ASCE channels that reach our membership, which is largely practicing civil engineers. But by and large, our content really is consumed within the profession. So an opportunity came to us to participate in the climate change knowledge co-operative, and we were really excited about it.
DANA COMPTON: So this is a statement directly from the CCKC website and describes this as a major, new collaborative initiative to help broaden the discovery and understanding of climate change research and accelerate its application towards a sustainable future. This is co-organized by kudus and impact science. There's a group of participating publishers and sponsors that you can see in the bottom left here. And the way this works is that CCKC offered several levels of participation based on the number of research articles a publisher wanted to include in a showcase at different price points.
DANA COMPTON: And then for your investment, impact science creates the plain language summaries, the videos, or infographics via accessible content, to post in an overall cross-publisher showcase and in a branded publisher showcase if you so choose. So the idea here is really to help publishers, societies, universities maximize reach by summarizing the climate literature in plain language. Readership by accelerating the discovery of climate change research through large scale press and publicity campaigns beyond academia.
DANA COMPTON: And recognition by demonstrating how scholarly communication is instrumental in tackling climate change. So we figure this is a great opportunity for us to make some progress on two of our strategic initiatives for a relatively modest investment. I just want to briefly show you our ASCE branded showcase. So headlines the beginning of our summaries for our articles. We opted in for 20 total articles.
DANA COMPTON: So again, this is really a highly curated selection from all the climate change content we have. Each accompanied by a summary. Some that we will add in the future. We'll have a video or an infographic associated. This was launched in conjunction with the COP26 conference this past fall. And so in terms of timeline and what we were able to do for initial launch, we launched with five articles, and we're adding to it over time.
DANA COMPTON: But again, nice, like image-led portal for those articles. So why participate? For us, this felt like a very natural way to expand our strategic efforts, addresses our resource challenges in translating the content. It expands our publicity and our reach beyond academia to mainstream media, to science media that we don't already have strong inroads with.
DANA COMPTON: And thanks to the economies of scale from working with this broader group, it also addresses our need for limited financial investment. And then, of course, ideally, being involved in this group raises our profile, demonstrates the value that ASCE content adds in tackling the global climate change crisis. And thus, in alignment with our strategy as a preeminent publisher of sustainability-related content.
DANA COMPTON: The only problem is that we aren't selling this product. So this is one of very few products that we've actually decided to fund without expecting any revenue return. The summaries in the portal are open. They do link back to primary research that is subscription-based. But we've made an investment in this.
DANA COMPTON: And this isn't contributing to the financial return to our organization. And as many society publishers, ASCE does rely on publications income from pubs to fund many of the programs it supports to advance the profession. So in this particular case for this initiative, we can justify our participation in terms of financial success. Yes, it supports our pub strategy.
DANA COMPTON: Yes, it supports the ASCE sustainability strategy and roadmap. But how are we gauging whether this is worthwhile? We do get frequent reporting from Kudos that covers metrics like social media mentions, and engagement exposure, and the press, and those sorts of things. But what has been really telling to me have been the usage stats that we've been tracking.
DANA COMPTON: So here, we have our first five articles. We've looked at overall usage in the first month after online publication and then compared that to the first month after the article summary was added to the CCKC showcase. So as you can see, these articles are garnering double, triple, even four, or five, or many more times the usage post CCKC inclusion than they had upon initial release.
DANA COMPTON: Of course, can't fully attribute this to CCKC. Could be other factors. But we find this compelling at least in terms of looking at the one factor that we know has changed for these articles, the CCKC posting. And of course, the accompanying publicity that goes along with that I will say the articles range in age at the time that we posted them.
DANA COMPTON: Some were three, four months old when they were posted in CCKC. Others were coming up on two years. So it's a little hard to tell what percentage of an article's overall usage has been driven by this initiative. But what I can say, for example, for the first two articles, they were both just about three, four months old at the time of being added to CCKC. And they've now been in there for about the same amount of time.
DANA COMPTON: And so what we see is in those three or four months before accounts for about 23% of the usage, and in the three to four months after, 77% of the usage. So what's next? Like I said, we've opted in for 20 articles. So we've selected an additional 15 that will be added over time in batches of five. All have summaries.
DANA COMPTON: Like I said, some will have videos or infographics. So more accessible content pieces that we can share very broadly specific to climate change. And then looking further ahead, our team has been creating curated collections that align to four more UN SDGs. And we plan to create landing pages for those on our own site. But ideally, we'll really want to add a similar layer of accessibility and publicity around that as well.
DANA COMPTON: So hopefully, if anybody from Kudos or Impact Science is listening, we'd love for this to continue I do know there have been some talk about more SDG work. So that's about it for me. Thank you so much tonight for inviting me and all of you for listening. Very much looking forward to Q&A. But of course, feel free to reach out to me. My contact information is here if you have questions, or you want to discuss.
DANA COMPTON: And I am going to hand us off to Andy. Thank you so much.
ANDY ROBINSON: OK. Great. Thanks, Dana. Let me just get my slides up. Can you see those? Great. Well, thanks, Dana. So thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk about CABI as a case study for how we might embed the UN Sustainable Development Goals into organizational strategies and how this might then flow into product development choices down the line.
ANDY ROBINSON: Well, I think we've already heard about the SDGs, so I won't go into the background again other than to say that they were launched in 2015 and ratified by all UN member states. But it might be worth restating the obvious, which is that I think it's hard to imagine. They don't apply to pretty much all of the people contributing to or watching this event. We all have the opportunity to make a difference at various levels in our respective organizations.
ANDY ROBINSON: And when we talk about the SDGs in the context of the information community, we hear a lot about becoming more ethical in terms of how we produce and distribute information. And that discussion tends to focus on the core areas relating to SDG 4, which is quality education. SDGs 5 and 10, which relates to gender and other inequalities. SDG 12, around responsible consumption and production.
ANDY ROBINSON: And then SDG 17, partnerships for the goals, which includes the SDG's publishers compact of which CABI was an early signatory. And CABI definitely addresses these SDGs through its knowledge products, through participation in great industry initiatives, like Research4Life and the RSC joint commitment. Our own EDI policies and practices and initiatives around sustainable production.
ANDY ROBINSON: But I'd like to widen the discussion beyond these general approaches to tackling the SDGs to show how CABI as an organization focuses on these eight SDGs in particular. And then to highlight how these relate to the organization's mission and permeate through the five main strategic goals all the way down to product development. Now, I will confess that CABI is not your typical publisher. It's a not for profit owned by 49 member governments that's dedicated to solving problems in agriculture in the environment with a particular focus on helping farmers to grow more and lose less of what they produce.
ANDY ROBINSON: As a mission-driven organization, it's fair to say that everything we do actually is supposed to align to the SDGs I've already highlighted. And we do this by focusing on food and nutrition security, climate change and biodiversity, gender and youth opportunities, and economic growth. Through our expertise in integrated crop health, invasive species, knowledge management, and value chains and trade.
ANDY ROBINSON: And this focus on expertise drives our organizational goals. And these are developed and ratified every three years with our member governments. Our first goal is to improve food security and the livelihoods of smallholder communities. So globally, there are something like 500 million smallholder farmers who face many barriers to selling their produce, which restricts their earning power and keeps them in poverty, whether that be from production and post-harvest losses, to compliance with food quality standards, to accessing finance and credit.
ANDY ROBINSON: Nearly a billion people go hungry every day, while 30% to 40% of crop production is lost each year to pests and diseases. If we can reduce crop losses by 1%, we could feed millions more people. And CABI contributes to this by strengthening national plant health systems. For example, delivering mobile plant health clinics via the Plantwise program.
ANDY ROBINSON: And information resources, like the Plantwise Knowledge Bank. We're going to need to feed an estimated global population of $9 to $10 billion by 2050, which means we're going to need to produce more food from the available land and water and reduce food loss and waste. But food production is already responsible for a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions.
ANDY ROBINSON: And that proportion will only increase. Meanwhile, smallholder farmers are already experiencing climate disruptions due to weather patterns. And as climate changes, there are far reaching implications for which crops can be grown where, along with the migration and spread of crop pests. In the face of shifting pest outbreaks, an example of how we support farmers is the pest risk information service, which is funded by the UK Space Agency, where we deliver text alerts to farmers on pest outbreaks based on geospatial data and the modeling of climatic conditions and pest epidemiology.
ANDY ROBINSON: We also focus on reducing inequality for women and young people. Women make up 43% of the global agricultural workforce. In some areas, farming is almost entirely carried out by women as men migrate to cities to find work. But women's production levels are about 20% to 30% lower than men's because of lack of access and control over land, labor, credit, knowledge, and market opportunities.
ANDY ROBINSON: Likewise, young people don't see agriculture as an attractive option for many of the same reasons. CABI now explicitly builds gender considerations into all of our development projects. More specifically, we tailor information, training, and communication channels for women and young people according to local custom and practice. Invasive species are the second greatest threat to biodiversity after habitat loss.
ANDY ROBINSON: Millions of people in rural communities face problems with invasive non-native species of plants, animals, and insects. And we're going to come back to this one in a bit. And we do all of this by increasing the reach and impact of science. Scientists and social scientists published over 100 open access articles per year. We help organizations like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to optimize their FAIR data sharing policies and practices.
ANDY ROBINSON: Through digital extension and development, we reach farmers and their advisors through a range of media, from in person plant health clinics, social networks, to radio and print news media. And through scidev.net, the world's leading source of news about science and technology for global development, we target the all important policy makers in government. And of course, through our knowledge and information products and services from search and discovery, through journals and preprints, books, CABI Academy e-learning modules, to workflow tools and apps.
ANDY ROBINSON: So now, I'd like to drill down a little bit deeper into a case study to show just how we can start to tackle one of the big SDG challenges via our products. And that challenge is invasive species, which cost the world $1.4 trillion every year. Fall Armyworm, for example, hopped on a boat from the Americas and decimated maize crops as it chomped its way across Africa and Asia. Invasive species undermine food security and economic growth and contribute to population migration and cause massive loss of biodiversity.
ANDY ROBINSON: So it's not surprising that invasive species are a specific SDG target as part of SDG 15, life on land. But they impact almost all of the SDGs. Parthenium, for example, also known as famine weed, causes dermatitis and respiratory problems in humans. 70% of schoolchildren leave school during peak weeding times to control invasive plants. And in Africa, 100 million women spend 20 billion hours weeding every year.
ANDY ROBINSON: Not only that. Invasive species undermine water supplies, energy production. They de-oxygenate aquatic environments. And the challenge is only growing due to increased trade, travel, and climate change. Which is why CABI launched an Action on Invasives Program in 2018. And one of the enduring outputs from that project was the Invasive Species Compendium.
ANDY ROBINSON: It's an encyclopedic resource that supports decision making in invasive species management, and it focuses on the global invasive species that have the greatest impacts on livelihoods and the environment. And it contains 12,000 curated data sheets on the distribution, pathways of entry, their natural enemies, and 5,000 practical guides to identification and management, which means it's useful to researchers, to risk assessors, land managers, and plant protection officers.
ANDY ROBINSON: The species distribution data has been abstracted from thousands of research articles over decades. And that distribution data powers the horizon scanning tool. It's a decision support aid that helps to identify species that might enter a particular country or area from another country. Literally, what invasive species are just over the horizon.
ANDY ROBINSON: So for example, if you're a plant protection officer, then you need to understand the risk of importing or exporting an invasive species. Along with a consignment of maize, it provides a comprehensive listing that can be used as part of a pest risk analysis. In recognition of SDG 17, partnerships for the goals, I would like to thank the many supporters of the ISC who made this possible.
ANDY ROBINSON: So to sum up, I hope I've given you a quick overview of how COVID has embraced the SDGs as part of its mission, and how they're embedded into our organizational strategies and goals. I could have mentioned many other CABI knowledge initiatives, and some of these case studies are available at the link to the IPA website shown here. I think they showcase how information and knowledge can really advance progress in meeting the challenges embodied by the SDGs.
ANDY ROBINSON: And I'd encourage you and your organization to go beyond signing up to the SDG publishers compact, to embed action into your organizational and product development strategies. Thank you.
DR HASEEB IRFANULLAH: Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be on this panel. Today, I am going to talk about sustainability, research, or scholarly ethics, and how these are connected with north and south divide. When we look into the world around us, we see that so many societal challenges, environmental challenges, social inequity. We see poverty, food insecurity, water insecurity.
DR HASEEB IRFANULLAH: And these challenges, these are not only for now, but for the future. So these have kind of a transgenerational dimension in it. That's why when the world came together in 2015 to develop and agree upon SDGs framework, it not only bind us in all the different dimensions, the social, economic, and environmental.
DR HASEEB IRFANULLAH: It doesn't only help us to be concerned about those, but also inspire us what to do and how to do it. But to achieve SDGs and its goals and targets that we have agreed upon, we need research, as well as access to information. Not only to attain those targets, but also measuring the efforts or progress. But when we bring information community in all these discussions, that's quite big, isn't it?
DR HASEEB IRFANULLAH: So let us focus on the stakeholders within research system. So as we all know that research system, it is made up of four different components. The accessing research, obviously. The past research we need to access to. Design our new research and conduct it. Once the research is done, we communicated with the policymaker, our fellow researchers as well.
DR HASEEB IRFANULLAH: And once it is done, it becomes part of the past research as well. But research communication is not the end. We need to utilize it. And SDGs, the framework actually guiding us to create an environment where research impact the highest. And while we use the research by making some policy changes, some practice changes, it also help us to design new research to answer new questions.
DR HASEEB IRFANULLAH: If we keep this framework in mind, why do ethical dimensions fits in? Well, let us take our research communication as an example. If we look into different guidelines offered by COPE, we see that there are ethical concerns when we talk about authorship, editorial editorship, editorial board makeup, peer review, risk reduction investigation, all sorts of things.
DR HASEEB IRFANULLAH: Now, let's move to the other part that we need to discuss today, is north and south divide. Yes, we have made some fantastic progress, no doubt about it. When we talk about accessing research, yes, programs like Research4Life. It is thousands of journals are relevant to the global south. And so many publishers joined their hands together to make this possible. When we talk about publishing research, yes, there are some criticism regarding open access publishing because sometimes, they charge very high article posting fees.
DR HASEEB IRFANULLAH: But there are provisions where publishers can waive, or they can offer discounts to the researchers from the global south. And when we talk about publishers supporting the global equity, well, there are regional open access journals, which are enhancing global or geographical equity among different geographical regions. But there are some situations which might not sound that ethical.
DR HASEEB IRFANULLAH: Let me take a very popular example or a situation. When we talk about peer review system, the publisher, we are asking peer reviewers to offer their service for free. On the other hand, we are charging thousands of dollars for the institutions, or of that matter, the readers, to read a particular journal. Same goes for authors. When they want to publish their article in a good peer reviewed journal, open access journal, they have to pay thousands of dollars.
DR HASEEB IRFANULLAH: That is a bitter irony. Another example from peer review. As a peer reviewer from the global south, when I review a paper, but if my institution doesn't have access to that particular journal, so I will not be able to read the paper which I have peer reviewed. Similarly, if there are pieces of research done on my country on my people, and it has been published in a journal which is not open access, my country as a whole will not be able to access that as well.
DR HASEEB IRFANULLAH: Although that knowledge is about me, that the paper is talking about me. The final situation I would like to share with you is countries, especially the lower and middle income countries, they are progressing economically. Like my country is a lower income country. And for the next few years, we are hoping to become a lower middle income country. Now, at the moment, I am enjoying thousands of journals for free through Research4Life for program.
DR HASEEB IRFANULLAH: I'm enjoying whatever on APCs. But when my country will graduate from lower income country to lower middle income countries, many of those offers, many of those positions will stop. But interestingly, the way my country is graduating economically, my country's investment in research system is not progressing in that pace.
DR HASEEB IRFANULLAH: So that's a challenge, isn't it? Stopping those prohibition just my country has changed its status. So we need to look into some underlying questions. For example, the broader question is can we really have an ethical information or research community without reducing the divide that you see between north and south, while we are trying our best to meet the SDGs by 2030?
DR HASEEB IRFANULLAH: Be more specific. And we contextualize the ethical consideration or ethical perspective that we see in the north. And we really contextualize effectively those for the south. I think the second question, let me share with you six different scenarios. I will be asking you some questions with all these scenarios if we can respond to them.
DR HASEEB IRFANULLAH: First, let us imagine the researchers from the global south, they are saying that thank you very much, the world. We are now having access to the global research, but we would like to publish our research locally. Can you say that the global south is acting unethically because it is exploiting the free access to global literature, but not publishing their research globally?
DR HASEEB IRFANULLAH: Similarly, if the south says that well, since the APCs are so high, we can't afford it, that's why we will be publishing only in freely accessible local journals that we have. As a result, we will be seeing kind of nationalistic scholarly isolation. Can you really blame the south for that? Another instance. There are certain sovereign institutions which in fact demands their researchers they should be publishing a certain percentage of their research in the local and regional journals.
DR HASEEB IRFANULLAH: Because they have to survive as well. And those should be easily accessible to the local stakeholders. But how do we see that kind of demand from the southern institutions, that restriction? It's really depriving the researchers from the south to enjoy their freedom where they can publish their research or not. ' individual level, we see that a researcher from the south are collaborating with researcher from the north.
DR HASEEB IRFANULLAH: And we very much appreciate that because it blends as inclusion, scholarly inclusion. But what happens often that the researchers from the south, they are not actually contributing intellectually. They might be supporting some research material, providing with some research materials, but not actual intellectual contribution. How do we see that? Is it ethically OK?
DR HASEEB IRFANULLAH: Coming to the utilization of research, the use component of research system. Many southern governments, they are reluctant to follow the pathway we called evidence-guided policy and practice change. That actually jeopardize the role of research that I have mentioned in my earlier slide. The role of research in attaining is SDGs and that policies.
DR HASEEB IRFANULLAH: How do we see that? Finally, as we can understand from these five examples, we need system change in the south. But can we really expect that the southern researchers will abide by the ethical guidance that is formulated or articulated by the north? Because is not helping them to change their system that is so much needed to follow those ethical standards.
DR HASEEB IRFANULLAH: So these are the questions. But I do not want to stop by asking the questions. I would like to share three ways to start changing this. If we really want to make our scholarly society more ethical, ethically aware, ethically active, we need to do three things. First, the northern institutions we need to work together with regional and international partners, so that we can create a collective narrative of what do we mean by a scholarly ethics?
DR HASEEB IRFANULLAH: And while doing that, we need to consider and contextualize the issues that I have raised in my previous slide. Those are from the south. Their issues, their concerns, and of course, their realities. The second point is the north not also needs to work with the south and support their understanding and capacity in terms of, say, scholarly standards. Why we need structural changes, and how can we achieve that?
DR HASEEB IRFANULLAH: And why it is important that all our is digital actions should be evidence-guided? That understanding is very much needed. But to do that, north shouldn't be working only with these existing networks. It has to see beyond that. That's why we need to capitalize on, we need to learn from, we need to harness the experiences, that perspective, expertise that we have throughout the world at the regional level, local level, and international.
DR HASEEB IRFANULLAH: So to end my presentation, I would like to summarize in that manner. We need to change the way we narrate ethics in scholarly communication. But that change will not be made by the north. North shouldn't call us out, please join us to change the system. Of course, south shouldn't be waiting for north's call to make those changes.
DR HASEEB IRFANULLAH: The north and the south need to come together, and they need to meet in the middle, collaborate, to make a more fiscally responsible scholarly system and information communication. That's all from me. Thank you very much.
Segment:0 .
REBEKKAH SMITH
ALDRICH: Hi, everyone.
ALDRICH: I'm Rebekkah Smith Aldrich. And I'm pleased to be here on this panel today to talk about ethics and the future of the work that we do in the information profession. My talk today is titled, The Just Transition. We'll talk a bit about the need for the transition, not only of the economy, but our mindsets often, and the work that we do, and how we do the work that we do. And there's no denying at this point, climate change is a major factor in the future of our world.
ALDRICH: And it touches on every aspect of our life and how we do our work, to the point where I think it's safe to say that every job needs to be a climate job in order for us all to thrive in the future. I don't know if anyone else here is a fan of Buckminster Fuller. But when I was thinking about this topic, I grabbed my trusty Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth because for the future to be successful, it really does have to be everybody or is nobody.
ALDRICH: So as we start to think about how we do our work, the frameworks we use to make decisions, both business decisions and output decisions about our work, we have to take a more global view perhaps than we have in the past about decision making, from the very small things we do to the very large things we influence, about how we control the future from our own sphere of influence. And so the work that I've been doing both in New York state with the American Library Association and now with the national program, the Sustainable Libraries Initiative, this is all the work we are trying to put into the idea that we need a methodology for working in our libraries, whether they're public, academic, or school libraries to create better decision making processes that result in more ethical decisions for us as institutions and result for a more ethical and thriving future for the people that we serve.
ALDRICH: So the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change at the United Nations, obviously, a lot of climate scientists talking about the future and how to not only mitigate, but adapt in the face of climate change. Actually in 2014, put forth for ideas that are pretty solid across every sector that we all work in. The idea that to be successful in the face of climate change.
ALDRICH: Again, mitigation and adaptation. We have to focus at the local level. What strategies make sense for the local that we are talking about? The local geography, the local region. How climate change is hitting that area of our world, to make sure that the grassroots energy for problem solving is put towards something that's really close to the heart of the people that are working on it.
ALDRICH: So they're more apt to work together because they have a shared common goal. And we can't do this work without recognizing and valuing diversity and really pushing forth the idea that without empathy, respect, and understanding for our neighbors, regardless of where they come from and what their backgrounds are, we're not going to be successful in the future. So wherever we sit in the information profession, part of our work is to help all be heard through the work that we do in a variety of formats, industries, and sectors.
ALDRICH: So we're really well positioned to be powerful players in this transition to a brighter future for all, which requires an ethical framework for making decisions that might be sitting within your heart, your chest personally. But we need to elevate that and amplify to the institution level of making decisions about the future. And that was part of the push for why the American Library Association adopted sustainability as a core value of the profession.
ALDRICH: This is a very new thing. It's actually only from 2019. But it's a very big deal. It's the entire industry's leadership indicating that sustainability has an urgency tied to it today, to the point where we need to embed it in the thinking of the profession and actually, for the next generation of leaders coming up.
ALDRICH: This resolution that made sustainability a core value of the American Library Association at the same point, in the same resolution, also mandated that accreditation standards for library schools throughout the country now teach sustainability to up and coming leaders in graduate school. So we're really playing the long game here to shift the thinking of folks. And to do that, we need a common vocabulary.
ALDRICH: So ALA actually adopted the triple bottom line definition of sustainability to help folks understand we're not just talking about going green. We're not just talking about the climate as it results and relates to the environment. But that really, as the famous conservationist John Muir said, it's all connected. You tug on one little thread, and you realize it's tied to the economy.
ALDRICH: It's tied to society. It's tied to systemic issues in our countries that have not necessarily benefited all equally. So sustainability is the balance of these three things. Environmentally sound choices that are fair to all involved. So they're socially equitable. And they're economically feasible because we can no longer continue to make decisions that are either not affordable for us locally and not affordable for us globally.
ALDRICH: So this balance of these three items is the goal in decision making, which provides a mindset and a framework for making more ethical decisions as professionals, as institutions, and ultimately, as local and global communities. This is a maybe not a radical idea. But when you understand the radical shift that's necessary to truly make change happen in our world, we understand we're touching on a very delicate topic, which is economics.
ALDRICH: Not necessarily stuff that most of us went to school for, but definitely a system that we participate in that is denigrating the future of our world economically, societally, and from the environmental standpoint. So this phrase of a just transition to an economy and to a way of thinking that is necessary for a brighter future for us all is really where I'm coming from here today, to acknowledge that the game is afoot, right?
ALDRICH: There's policy changes being made. There's efforts by NGOs and governments to change how we think about the future. Transition is coming. But whether or not justice is embedded in that transition of policy, of economics, of how we treat folks in our society, we're not going to be in much of a better spot than we are today.
ALDRICH: So wherever you sit in your organization, the infusion of justice into the work I think is part of that framework that must be at the center and the core of how we make decisions in the future. My hope is that we are looking at something that looks more like what the economist Kate Raworth calls the donut economy, where we respect and build a social foundation that supports all in an equitable way.
ALDRICH: And that we respect the ecological ceiling, which is the reality of the natural world around us. So we stop abusing the natural world around us. And in between those two parameters, we build an economy and a design not to just grow, and grow, and grow without thought, but is designed to help people thrive and really have a future that is not just about surviving whatever's coming next. But that we're not just available to bounce back when another disruption comes, but that we're infusing new and energetic life into the world around us by having our social needs cared for and our ecological ceilings respected.
ALDRICH: So this dashboard that Raworth created really shows how out of whack everything is. And when we think about the enormity of what we're talking about here, and you've got have several more excellent speakers you're hearing from today that are going to talk very specifically about the sustainable development goals from the United Nations. We're talking about everything all at once.
ALDRICH: And that can be overwhelming to the point of paralysis. So as we think about the entire world around us, we have to break it into smaller chunks and really leverage our sphere of influence where we sit to have a positive impact in the decisions that we're making in our professional lives. So this might seem a little out there, radical, but this whole idea of the just transition is really actually very simple.
ALDRICH: We're looking to fight this stuff that's not good for us. We're looking to introduce stuff that is good for us. We're talking about moving decision making power to the folks that it actually impacts. We're looking to build a bigger we, to bring more people into decision making, to make sure we're hearing a diversity of voices and backgrounds to enrich the fabric of decisions that are being made and really change the narrative, change the storyline of where we're going in the future.
ALDRICH: So this concept of a just transition has five key elements to it that might be useful as we think through the future of our institutions and how we do our work. We're obviously advancing ecological restoration as the natural world around us is suffering quite a bit. But democratizing communities and workplaces, so more voices are heard. And driving racial and social equity to make sure that past wrongs are rated, but also to encourage that empathy and I think gap bridging that's necessary to have more people involved in the decisions that affect their lives.
ALDRICH: Thinking very heavily about local. About how do you relocalize where production is happening, how businesses are celebrated. And really speak to the need to grow local economies in a way that understands that how we invest in those might look different than the way we did yesterday. And of course, retaining and restoring cultures and traditions, which is what many of us work in institutions that are really strongly devoted to.
ALDRICH: It's so important to celebrate the wisdom of the past and to learn from that, either whether they be mistakes or achievements that have been made in the past, but to respect what has come before us. So we learn from that and can accelerate changes in conversations that are necessary for the future. So I serve on the board of the Center for the Future of Libraries. And we do trend spotting.
ALDRICH: And this trend is aging obviously. But to me, it's timeless. The idea of collective impact. That we can not longer just make our own decisions in a silo or a vacuum. We need to find like-minded partners and pull together in the same direction. And my hope is that our same direction to simplify a very complex issue.
ALDRICH: And to sum, one goal I think we all need to think about is social cohesion. The more work we do to strength in the fabric of our communities, to help folks understand, respect, and have empathy for one another is going to build the resilience of communities to be able to face whatever disruptions come our way next, which by the very nature of disruption, you never quite know what it's going to look like.
ALDRICH: So just to wrap up here, to make sure I'm fair about the time I'm taking here. I think our institutions need to lead by example, from the inside out. That we make policy decisions that are good for all. That we treat our workers well. That we run our facilities in a way that's ethical and environmentally conscientious. And really serve as a model for others in our community, wherever we may be situated.
ALDRICH: And test for equity. Let's make sure we're actually being equitable and not just focusing on equality, which is not necessarily fair to all involved. And really be honest about impact over intention. All of us have very good intentions, but we rarely take the time to go back and actually look at the impact of the choices that we've made. So we really need to be honest about the measurement of intentionality in the work that we do, to make sure we're having the desired effect in policy decisions and messaging that we're doing in our communities and with our constituents.
ALDRICH: And then of course, working with like minded partners, which is so wonderful. In conferences like this or you get to connect with other people who are thinking like you do and finding allies and work that needs to be done. So just a little commercial here this is the project I'm working on in my spare time. This is the Sustainable Libraries Initiative. If you're interested in learning more about this.
ALDRICH: So what you see on the left is a little workbook. You can download it as a PDF, or it's actually designed as a mobile app you can download for iOS or Android. And work through some of these issues in your own mind to try to extrapolate them into your workplace. We also have an award-winning certification program for public libraries, academic libraries, and school librarians, which is pretty cool. That helps people think through the methodology related to the triple bottom line in working in the library environment.
ALDRICH: So my contact information is here. I'm very active on social media. I love hearing about what folks are up to, so we have more examples of people making good decisions, going in the right direction. And obviously, I write quite a bit on the topic. So you've got some connections to other work that's going on in the field of librarianship when it comes to sustainability.
ALDRICH: But I thank you for the opportunity to be here. And I'm looking forward to hear Dana speak next.
DANA COMPTON: Thanks so much, Rebekkah. All right. I'm going to go ahead and share my screen. All right. Thanks, everybody. I'm Dana Compton from the American Society of Civil Engineers. Really happy to be here today on this panel. So I'm going to talk today about how we at ASCE have incorporated mission-based goals such as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the Climate Change Knowledge Cooperative into our publishing strategy.
DANA COMPTON: So first off, sustainability is a key strategic area for ASCE as an organization. So about a year and a half ago, we appointed a chief sustainability officer. We have a committee on sustainability, as well as one focused on adapting to a changing climate. And we have a sustainability roadmap that frames sustainability as a strategic issue, confronting practicing civil engineers that must be integrated into professional practice.
DANA COMPTON: And the roadmap is really intended to transform the civil engineering's profession with respect to sustainability. The roadmap has four main priorities. And I'm really not going to delve deeply into each of these, except to note that the first three really are more inwardly focused on civil engineering practice, as are most of our society activities and programs.
DANA COMPTON: But what I want to point out is the fourth priority around communication and advocacy. So in this priority, we see that ASCE as an organization assumes a responsibility to communicate the need for transformational change to promote sustainable infrastructure with all stakeholders. So not just our membership, not just our author base, not just our readership, but also the public.
DANA COMPTON: This is a little different from our priorities in other areas of what we do as a society. And ASCE is stating that its end goal for priority four on the sustainability roadmap is for both the membership and the public to demand sustainable infrastructure to enable healthy and thriving communities. Of course, for our members and the public to demand something, they need to understand it ideally.
DANA COMPTON: So I'm going to then drill down a layer into our publication strategy. So our pub strategic plan is organized around six guiding principles. And two of these really dovetail with the ASCE's sustainability goals. So the first is, aptly, sustainability. And for us, this means positioning ourselves as a leading publisher of sustainability content and civil engineering.
DANA COMPTON: So some key goals here include assessing our existing content, developing content collections that raise the profile of the great volume of sustainability-related content we already have, as well as guiding decisions about future acquisitions, ancillary content opportunities, and so forth. The other pertinent principle for this discussion is accessibility. And this encompasses not just the typical technical aspects that you might think of.
DANA COMPTON: But part of what we mean when we talk about accessibility is seeking opportunities to translate technical content for a less technical or a non-technical audience. So this includes things like synopsis statements, videos, infographics, podcasts, the list goes on. We also focus on finding channels to expose that accessible content to audiences outside our typical audience in academia.
DANA COMPTON: Of course, as with anything, there are a number of challenges that we face in achieving these goals. We have a ton of applicable content. At face value, that's really a good thing. But we publish 35 research journals, more than 4,600 articles, year-end notes. A books program with upwards of 50 front list titles per year. Conference proceedings with an additional 4,000 plus papers per year, standards.
DANA COMPTON: A lot of content. And a lot of it has an element of sustainability with sustainable infrastructure in it. So curating that content, ensuring the right bits are discoverable to the right users really is quite difficult. We have made some progress with more granular taxonomy, primarily aligned around the UN SDGs. But in some cases, an automated solution still raises tens of thousands of results.
DANA COMPTON: Adding a human curation element that really uncovers the most relevant, most up to date, highest quality subsections of content means more burden on staff. And honestly, as we're not civil engineers or subject matter experts, we're publishing professionals, it really translates to our overburdened volunteers. Another challenge is, of course, resources to translate very dense technical research content into accessible language and formats.
DANA COMPTON: We simply don't have internal resources to do this. Our team is just over 30 people. And again, not subject matter experts. We have begun relying on authors and editors to provide some practitioner-focused contextualization, but they're not really in a position to translate content for multiple audiences, including the public. So that just hasn't been happening.
DANA COMPTON: And then finally, of course, our reach within publications is primarily to academia, like I mentioned. We do have some ASCE channels that reach our membership, which is largely practicing civil engineers. But by and large, our content really is consumed within the profession. So an opportunity came to us to participate in the climate change knowledge co-operative, and we were really excited about it.
DANA COMPTON: So this is a statement directly from the CCKC website and describes this as a major, new collaborative initiative to help broaden the discovery and understanding of climate change research and accelerate its application towards a sustainable future. This is co-organized by kudus and impact science. There's a group of participating publishers and sponsors that you can see in the bottom left here. And the way this works is that CCKC offered several levels of participation based on the number of research articles a publisher wanted to include in a showcase at different price points.
DANA COMPTON: And then for your investment, impact science creates the plain language summaries, the videos, or infographics via accessible content, to post in an overall cross-publisher showcase and in a branded publisher showcase if you so choose. So the idea here is really to help publishers, societies, universities maximize reach by summarizing the climate literature in plain language. Readership by accelerating the discovery of climate change research through large scale press and publicity campaigns beyond academia.
DANA COMPTON: And recognition by demonstrating how scholarly communication is instrumental in tackling climate change. So we figure this is a great opportunity for us to make some progress on two of our strategic initiatives for a relatively modest investment. I just want to briefly show you our ASCE branded showcase. So headlines the beginning of our summaries for our articles. We opted in for 20 total articles.
DANA COMPTON: So again, this is really a highly curated selection from all the climate change content we have. Each accompanied by a summary. Some that we will add in the future. We'll have a video or an infographic associated. This was launched in conjunction with the COP26 conference this past fall. And so in terms of timeline and what we were able to do for initial launch, we launched with five articles, and we're adding to it over time.
DANA COMPTON: But again, nice, like image-led portal for those articles. So why participate? For us, this felt like a very natural way to expand our strategic efforts, addresses our resource challenges in translating the content. It expands our publicity and our reach beyond academia to mainstream media, to science media that we don't already have strong inroads with.
DANA COMPTON: And thanks to the economies of scale from working with this broader group, it also addresses our need for limited financial investment. And then, of course, ideally, being involved in this group raises our profile, demonstrates the value that ASCE content adds in tackling the global climate change crisis. And thus, in alignment with our strategy as a preeminent publisher of sustainability-related content.
DANA COMPTON: The only problem is that we aren't selling this product. So this is one of very few products that we've actually decided to fund without expecting any revenue return. The summaries in the portal are open. They do link back to primary research that is subscription-based. But we've made an investment in this.
DANA COMPTON: And this isn't contributing to the financial return to our organization. And as many society publishers, ASCE does rely on publications income from pubs to fund many of the programs it supports to advance the profession. So in this particular case for this initiative, we can justify our participation in terms of financial success. Yes, it supports our pub strategy.
DANA COMPTON: Yes, it supports the ASCE sustainability strategy and roadmap. But how are we gauging whether this is worthwhile? We do get frequent reporting from Kudos that covers metrics like social media mentions, and engagement exposure, and the press, and those sorts of things. But what has been really telling to me have been the usage stats that we've been tracking.
DANA COMPTON: So here, we have our first five articles. We've looked at overall usage in the first month after online publication and then compared that to the first month after the article summary was added to the CCKC showcase. So as you can see, these articles are garnering double, triple, even four, or five, or many more times the usage post CCKC inclusion than they had upon initial release.
DANA COMPTON: Of course, can't fully attribute this to CCKC. Could be other factors. But we find this compelling at least in terms of looking at the one factor that we know has changed for these articles, the CCKC posting. And of course, the accompanying publicity that goes along with that I will say the articles range in age at the time that we posted them.
DANA COMPTON: Some were three, four months old when they were posted in CCKC. Others were coming up on two years. So it's a little hard to tell what percentage of an article's overall usage has been driven by this initiative. But what I can say, for example, for the first two articles, they were both just about three, four months old at the time of being added to CCKC. And they've now been in there for about the same amount of time.
DANA COMPTON: And so what we see is in those three or four months before accounts for about 23% of the usage, and in the three to four months after, 77% of the usage. So what's next? Like I said, we've opted in for 20 articles. So we've selected an additional 15 that will be added over time in batches of five. All have summaries.
DANA COMPTON: Like I said, some will have videos or infographics. So more accessible content pieces that we can share very broadly specific to climate change. And then looking further ahead, our team has been creating curated collections that align to four more UN SDGs. And we plan to create landing pages for those on our own site. But ideally, we'll really want to add a similar layer of accessibility and publicity around that as well.
DANA COMPTON: So hopefully, if anybody from Kudos or Impact Science is listening, we'd love for this to continue I do know there have been some talk about more SDG work. So that's about it for me. Thank you so much tonight for inviting me and all of you for listening. Very much looking forward to Q&A. But of course, feel free to reach out to me. My contact information is here if you have questions, or you want to discuss.
DANA COMPTON: And I am going to hand us off to Andy. Thank you so much.
ANDY ROBINSON: OK. Great. Thanks, Dana. Let me just get my slides up. Can you see those? Great. Well, thanks, Dana. So thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk about CABI as a case study for how we might embed the UN Sustainable Development Goals into organizational strategies and how this might then flow into product development choices down the line.
ANDY ROBINSON: Well, I think we've already heard about the SDGs, so I won't go into the background again other than to say that they were launched in 2015 and ratified by all UN member states. But it might be worth restating the obvious, which is that I think it's hard to imagine. They don't apply to pretty much all of the people contributing to or watching this event. We all have the opportunity to make a difference at various levels in our respective organizations.
ANDY ROBINSON: And when we talk about the SDGs in the context of the information community, we hear a lot about becoming more ethical in terms of how we produce and distribute information. And that discussion tends to focus on the core areas relating to SDG 4, which is quality education. SDGs 5 and 10, which relates to gender and other inequalities. SDG 12, around responsible consumption and production.
ANDY ROBINSON: And then SDG 17, partnerships for the goals, which includes the SDG's publishers compact of which CABI was an early signatory. And CABI definitely addresses these SDGs through its knowledge products, through participation in great industry initiatives, like Research4Life and the RSC joint commitment. Our own EDI policies and practices and initiatives around sustainable production.
ANDY ROBINSON: But I'd like to widen the discussion beyond these general approaches to tackling the SDGs to show how CABI as an organization focuses on these eight SDGs in particular. And then to highlight how these relate to the organization's mission and permeate through the five main strategic goals all the way down to product development. Now, I will confess that CABI is not your typical publisher. It's a not for profit owned by 49 member governments that's dedicated to solving problems in agriculture in the environment with a particular focus on helping farmers to grow more and lose less of what they produce.
ANDY ROBINSON: As a mission-driven organization, it's fair to say that everything we do actually is supposed to align to the SDGs I've already highlighted. And we do this by focusing on food and nutrition security, climate change and biodiversity, gender and youth opportunities, and economic growth. Through our expertise in integrated crop health, invasive species, knowledge management, and value chains and trade.
ANDY ROBINSON: And this focus on expertise drives our organizational goals. And these are developed and ratified every three years with our member governments. Our first goal is to improve food security and the livelihoods of smallholder communities. So globally, there are something like 500 million smallholder farmers who face many barriers to selling their produce, which restricts their earning power and keeps them in poverty, whether that be from production and post-harvest losses, to compliance with food quality standards, to accessing finance and credit.
ANDY ROBINSON: Nearly a billion people go hungry every day, while 30% to 40% of crop production is lost each year to pests and diseases. If we can reduce crop losses by 1%, we could feed millions more people. And CABI contributes to this by strengthening national plant health systems. For example, delivering mobile plant health clinics via the Plantwise program.
ANDY ROBINSON: And information resources, like the Plantwise Knowledge Bank. We're going to need to feed an estimated global population of $9 to $10 billion by 2050, which means we're going to need to produce more food from the available land and water and reduce food loss and waste. But food production is already responsible for a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions.
ANDY ROBINSON: And that proportion will only increase. Meanwhile, smallholder farmers are already experiencing climate disruptions due to weather patterns. And as climate changes, there are far reaching implications for which crops can be grown where, along with the migration and spread of crop pests. In the face of shifting pest outbreaks, an example of how we support farmers is the pest risk information service, which is funded by the UK Space Agency, where we deliver text alerts to farmers on pest outbreaks based on geospatial data and the modeling of climatic conditions and pest epidemiology.
ANDY ROBINSON: We also focus on reducing inequality for women and young people. Women make up 43% of the global agricultural workforce. In some areas, farming is almost entirely carried out by women as men migrate to cities to find work. But women's production levels are about 20% to 30% lower than men's because of lack of access and control over land, labor, credit, knowledge, and market opportunities.
ANDY ROBINSON: Likewise, young people don't see agriculture as an attractive option for many of the same reasons. CABI now explicitly builds gender considerations into all of our development projects. More specifically, we tailor information, training, and communication channels for women and young people according to local custom and practice. Invasive species are the second greatest threat to biodiversity after habitat loss.
ANDY ROBINSON: Millions of people in rural communities face problems with invasive non-native species of plants, animals, and insects. And we're going to come back to this one in a bit. And we do all of this by increasing the reach and impact of science. Scientists and social scientists published over 100 open access articles per year. We help organizations like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to optimize their FAIR data sharing policies and practices.
ANDY ROBINSON: Through digital extension and development, we reach farmers and their advisors through a range of media, from in person plant health clinics, social networks, to radio and print news media. And through scidev.net, the world's leading source of news about science and technology for global development, we target the all important policy makers in government. And of course, through our knowledge and information products and services from search and discovery, through journals and preprints, books, CABI Academy e-learning modules, to workflow tools and apps.
ANDY ROBINSON: So now, I'd like to drill down a little bit deeper into a case study to show just how we can start to tackle one of the big SDG challenges via our products. And that challenge is invasive species, which cost the world $1.4 trillion every year. Fall Armyworm, for example, hopped on a boat from the Americas and decimated maize crops as it chomped its way across Africa and Asia. Invasive species undermine food security and economic growth and contribute to population migration and cause massive loss of biodiversity.
ANDY ROBINSON: So it's not surprising that invasive species are a specific SDG target as part of SDG 15, life on land. But they impact almost all of the SDGs. Parthenium, for example, also known as famine weed, causes dermatitis and respiratory problems in humans. 70% of schoolchildren leave school during peak weeding times to control invasive plants. And in Africa, 100 million women spend 20 billion hours weeding every year.
ANDY ROBINSON: Not only that. Invasive species undermine water supplies, energy production. They de-oxygenate aquatic environments. And the challenge is only growing due to increased trade, travel, and climate change. Which is why CABI launched an Action on Invasives Program in 2018. And one of the enduring outputs from that project was the Invasive Species Compendium.
ANDY ROBINSON: It's an encyclopedic resource that supports decision making in invasive species management, and it focuses on the global invasive species that have the greatest impacts on livelihoods and the environment. And it contains 12,000 curated data sheets on the distribution, pathways of entry, their natural enemies, and 5,000 practical guides to identification and management, which means it's useful to researchers, to risk assessors, land managers, and plant protection officers.
ANDY ROBINSON: The species distribution data has been abstracted from thousands of research articles over decades. And that distribution data powers the horizon scanning tool. It's a decision support aid that helps to identify species that might enter a particular country or area from another country. Literally, what invasive species are just over the horizon.
ANDY ROBINSON: So for example, if you're a plant protection officer, then you need to understand the risk of importing or exporting an invasive species. Along with a consignment of maize, it provides a comprehensive listing that can be used as part of a pest risk analysis. In recognition of SDG 17, partnerships for the goals, I would like to thank the many supporters of the ISC who made this possible.
ANDY ROBINSON: So to sum up, I hope I've given you a quick overview of how COVID has embraced the SDGs as part of its mission, and how they're embedded into our organizational strategies and goals. I could have mentioned many other CABI knowledge initiatives, and some of these case studies are available at the link to the IPA website shown here. I think they showcase how information and knowledge can really advance progress in meeting the challenges embodied by the SDGs.
ANDY ROBINSON: And I'd encourage you and your organization to go beyond signing up to the SDG publishers compact, to embed action into your organizational and product development strategies. Thank you.
DR HASEEB IRFANULLAH: Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be on this panel. Today, I am going to talk about sustainability, research, or scholarly ethics, and how these are connected with north and south divide. When we look into the world around us, we see that so many societal challenges, environmental challenges, social inequity. We see poverty, food insecurity, water insecurity.
DR HASEEB IRFANULLAH: And these challenges, these are not only for now, but for the future. So these have kind of a transgenerational dimension in it. That's why when the world came together in 2015 to develop and agree upon SDGs framework, it not only bind us in all the different dimensions, the social, economic, and environmental.
DR HASEEB IRFANULLAH: It doesn't only help us to be concerned about those, but also inspire us what to do and how to do it. But to achieve SDGs and its goals and targets that we have agreed upon, we need research, as well as access to information. Not only to attain those targets, but also measuring the efforts or progress. But when we bring information community in all these discussions, that's quite big, isn't it?
DR HASEEB IRFANULLAH: So let us focus on the stakeholders within research system. So as we all know that research system, it is made up of four different components. The accessing research, obviously. The past research we need to access to. Design our new research and conduct it. Once the research is done, we communicated with the policymaker, our fellow researchers as well.
DR HASEEB IRFANULLAH: And once it is done, it becomes part of the past research as well. But research communication is not the end. We need to utilize it. And SDGs, the framework actually guiding us to create an environment where research impact the highest. And while we use the research by making some policy changes, some practice changes, it also help us to design new research to answer new questions.
DR HASEEB IRFANULLAH: If we keep this framework in mind, why do ethical dimensions fits in? Well, let us take our research communication as an example. If we look into different guidelines offered by COPE, we see that there are ethical concerns when we talk about authorship, editorial editorship, editorial board makeup, peer review, risk reduction investigation, all sorts of things.
DR HASEEB IRFANULLAH: Now, let's move to the other part that we need to discuss today, is north and south divide. Yes, we have made some fantastic progress, no doubt about it. When we talk about accessing research, yes, programs like Research4Life. It is thousands of journals are relevant to the global south. And so many publishers joined their hands together to make this possible. When we talk about publishing research, yes, there are some criticism regarding open access publishing because sometimes, they charge very high article posting fees.
DR HASEEB IRFANULLAH: But there are provisions where publishers can waive, or they can offer discounts to the researchers from the global south. And when we talk about publishers supporting the global equity, well, there are regional open access journals, which are enhancing global or geographical equity among different geographical regions. But there are some situations which might not sound that ethical.
DR HASEEB IRFANULLAH: Let me take a very popular example or a situation. When we talk about peer review system, the publisher, we are asking peer reviewers to offer their service for free. On the other hand, we are charging thousands of dollars for the institutions, or of that matter, the readers, to read a particular journal. Same goes for authors. When they want to publish their article in a good peer reviewed journal, open access journal, they have to pay thousands of dollars.
DR HASEEB IRFANULLAH: That is a bitter irony. Another example from peer review. As a peer reviewer from the global south, when I review a paper, but if my institution doesn't have access to that particular journal, so I will not be able to read the paper which I have peer reviewed. Similarly, if there are pieces of research done on my country on my people, and it has been published in a journal which is not open access, my country as a whole will not be able to access that as well.
DR HASEEB IRFANULLAH: Although that knowledge is about me, that the paper is talking about me. The final situation I would like to share with you is countries, especially the lower and middle income countries, they are progressing economically. Like my country is a lower income country. And for the next few years, we are hoping to become a lower middle income country. Now, at the moment, I am enjoying thousands of journals for free through Research4Life for program.
DR HASEEB IRFANULLAH: I'm enjoying whatever on APCs. But when my country will graduate from lower income country to lower middle income countries, many of those offers, many of those positions will stop. But interestingly, the way my country is graduating economically, my country's investment in research system is not progressing in that pace.
DR HASEEB IRFANULLAH: So that's a challenge, isn't it? Stopping those prohibition just my country has changed its status. So we need to look into some underlying questions. For example, the broader question is can we really have an ethical information or research community without reducing the divide that you see between north and south, while we are trying our best to meet the SDGs by 2030?
DR HASEEB IRFANULLAH: Be more specific. And we contextualize the ethical consideration or ethical perspective that we see in the north. And we really contextualize effectively those for the south. I think the second question, let me share with you six different scenarios. I will be asking you some questions with all these scenarios if we can respond to them.
DR HASEEB IRFANULLAH: First, let us imagine the researchers from the global south, they are saying that thank you very much, the world. We are now having access to the global research, but we would like to publish our research locally. Can you say that the global south is acting unethically because it is exploiting the free access to global literature, but not publishing their research globally?
DR HASEEB IRFANULLAH: Similarly, if the south says that well, since the APCs are so high, we can't afford it, that's why we will be publishing only in freely accessible local journals that we have. As a result, we will be seeing kind of nationalistic scholarly isolation. Can you really blame the south for that? Another instance. There are certain sovereign institutions which in fact demands their researchers they should be publishing a certain percentage of their research in the local and regional journals.
DR HASEEB IRFANULLAH: Because they have to survive as well. And those should be easily accessible to the local stakeholders. But how do we see that kind of demand from the southern institutions, that restriction? It's really depriving the researchers from the south to enjoy their freedom where they can publish their research or not. ' individual level, we see that a researcher from the south are collaborating with researcher from the north.
DR HASEEB IRFANULLAH: And we very much appreciate that because it blends as inclusion, scholarly inclusion. But what happens often that the researchers from the south, they are not actually contributing intellectually. They might be supporting some research material, providing with some research materials, but not actual intellectual contribution. How do we see that? Is it ethically OK?
DR HASEEB IRFANULLAH: Coming to the utilization of research, the use component of research system. Many southern governments, they are reluctant to follow the pathway we called evidence-guided policy and practice change. That actually jeopardize the role of research that I have mentioned in my earlier slide. The role of research in attaining is SDGs and that policies.
DR HASEEB IRFANULLAH: How do we see that? Finally, as we can understand from these five examples, we need system change in the south. But can we really expect that the southern researchers will abide by the ethical guidance that is formulated or articulated by the north? Because is not helping them to change their system that is so much needed to follow those ethical standards.
DR HASEEB IRFANULLAH: So these are the questions. But I do not want to stop by asking the questions. I would like to share three ways to start changing this. If we really want to make our scholarly society more ethical, ethically aware, ethically active, we need to do three things. First, the northern institutions we need to work together with regional and international partners, so that we can create a collective narrative of what do we mean by a scholarly ethics?
DR HASEEB IRFANULLAH: And while doing that, we need to consider and contextualize the issues that I have raised in my previous slide. Those are from the south. Their issues, their concerns, and of course, their realities. The second point is the north not also needs to work with the south and support their understanding and capacity in terms of, say, scholarly standards. Why we need structural changes, and how can we achieve that?
DR HASEEB IRFANULLAH: And why it is important that all our is digital actions should be evidence-guided? That understanding is very much needed. But to do that, north shouldn't be working only with these existing networks. It has to see beyond that. That's why we need to capitalize on, we need to learn from, we need to harness the experiences, that perspective, expertise that we have throughout the world at the regional level, local level, and international.
DR HASEEB IRFANULLAH: So to end my presentation, I would like to summarize in that manner. We need to change the way we narrate ethics in scholarly communication. But that change will not be made by the north. North shouldn't call us out, please join us to change the system. Of course, south shouldn't be waiting for north's call to make those changes.
DR HASEEB IRFANULLAH: The north and the south need to come together, and they need to meet in the middle, collaborate, to make a more fiscally responsible scholarly system and information communication. That's all from me. Thank you very much.
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