eLife has set up a new Communities team to oversee and drive forward its work in all areas of research culture, including the promotion of equity, diversity and inclusion, and efforts to increase openness and integrity in science and medicine.
The team is headed up by the Head of Communities Kora Korzec and Research Culture Manager Stuart King. They are responsible for the annual Ben Barres Spotlight Awards, which support the work of researchers from underrepresented backgrounds, first started in 2019 and now accepting applications for 2021.
Korzec and King have been involved in many eLife initiatives, from establishing the Early-Career Advisory Group to publishing eLife digests and helping the organisation to improve the process of peer review.
As part of this wider research culture reform, eLife and other organisations have realised the need to do more to promote equity, diversity and inclusion across science and medicine. King has been involved in a number of cross-sector initiatives over the past year, such as the Joint Commitment for Action on Inclusion and Diversity in Publishing, and the development of trans-inclusive policies to support author name changes. He and the Communities team continuously work on developing greater understanding and sensitivity in this area, and hope to lead by example in the pace of delivery on these values.
The Communities team has also guided eLife in reframing its research culture programme around its three core values of integrity, openness and inclusiveness, with strategies that aim for progress in each of these areas. They encompass efforts to improve how research is conducted and reported, and to build and maintain healthy research communities. This work includes Korzec’s involvement in mentoring initiatives aimed at promoting greater diversity in peer review, such as those carried out in partnership with PREreview.
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