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Why Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging Matter More Than Ever: A Response to Current Threats

Sona Lisa Arasteh-Roodsary, Pierre Mounier, Marion Paulhac, Johan Rooryck, Irakleitos Souyioultzoglou

With this statement, the authors express their deep concern over the recent surge in cultural and political backlash against initiatives and measures promoting Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging (EDIB). The ongoing defamation of EDIB dimensions and the funding cuts targeting research programmes, projects, and initiatives supporting their implementation are a serious threat to academic integrity, scholarly knowledge, and the scholarly communication ecosystem itself.

Scientific progress, scholarly quality, and societal impact require a diversity of perspectives and accessibility for all. A lack of these dimensions does not merely amount to a lack of representation but it represents a shortfall of scientific soundness. Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging are the condition of sound scholarly knowledge and a key pillar of academic freedom. Compliance with EDIB dimensions is not a subsidiary action but a key indicator of scientific quality. Therefore, the increasingly hostile stance towards all measures striving for a more equitable, diverse, and inclusive society represents a direct attack on the integrity of scholarly knowledge itself. As a public good, science and scientific outputs must be equally participatory and accessible to everyone regardless of linguistic, cultural, gender, academic, geographical, organisational, and/or economic backgrounds. 

For this reason, the EDIB dimensions are an integral part of the Diamond Open Access (OA) model, whose journals represent a wide diversity of multilingual, cultural, and epistemic traditions. At its core, Diamond Open Access is built on the very principles of equity, ensuring that scholarly content is freely accessible to authors and readers alike. Accordingly, through Diamond OA, we seek to further establish a decidedly equitable, transparent, and open environment for scholarly communication that is resilient to attacks on academic integrity. We firmly believe this to be the way of science: its outputs can only reach their full potential as a truly open and inclusive good that benefits all of society. 

We strongly encourage our colleagues, international organisations and national governments to actively support and preserve initiatives that promote, uphold, and protect EDIB principles.