Strategies to support women in research publishing

On International Women in Engineering Day, we outline the ways that Communications Engineering supports the equitable inclusion of women in our publishing activities. We also suggest ways in which researchers can be supporters of diversity and inclusion when publishing their own research.

editorial board.We also aim to have at least one woman in all our guest editor panels for all our Collections.
We will only know if our practices have any impact on authorship if we collect data on the gender of our authors.In March 2023 Springer Nature began its rollout of the collection of self-reported data on the gender of our authors, which has been implemented on the manuscript tracking systems of a select number of journals (https://www.springernature.com/gp/researchers/the-source/blog/blogposts-lifein-research/the-need-for-data-in-the-pathto-gender-equity-in-publishing/24089968).The intention is to slowly scale this activity until it is active across all journals.Communications Engineering has been part of this project since late April.When authors submit a manuscript, they are asked for details on gender; the options are man, woman, non-binary or gender diverse, and prefer not to disclose.In this way we join other publishers in observing the impact of new initiatives on representation and charting the progress of gender equity.
In the publishing space, there are some steps in which researchers as authors can support women.First, the recommended reviewer lists that we see in cover letters which support submissions often contain entirely men.We encourage you to also suggest women in your recommended reviewer lists.Tell us about the female rising stars, fantastic postdocs and assistant professors, as well as more established academics.Second, consider your reference lists.There are now numerous studies that show that across a variety of research fields, women are not cited as much as their male counterparts 1 .In these days where so much weight is put on citation metrics, consider carefully to whom you are allocating your privileged citation opportunities.Finally, to PIs: where it is appropriate, take care to ensure that the women who contributed to the research get recognised via authorship 2 .Even more powerful is to (again where appropriate) actively encourage the women in your group to be first and/or corresponding authors.The truth is that these are the names that others will look at and remember the most, from editors, to peer reviewers, to readers.
In recognition of INWED, today we publish two interesting papers that have a women-to-men author balance of 50:50 or greater.For primary research this is rare in our pages.First, we publish a paper from Kristen Brosamer, Katerina Kourentzi, Richard C. Willson and Binh V. Vu describing a sensitive lateral flow assay platform using the chemistry of glowsticks to report the detection of human chorionic gonadotropin and SARS-CoV-2 nucleoprotein, read by an unmodified smartphone.The researchers also provide evidence that the platform could offer multiplexed detection of analytes on a single test line 3 .In a second paper, Kai Junge, Catarina Pires and Josie Hughes describe a sensorized physical simulator of a real raspberry plant (i.e. a physical twin), and demonstrate that its use in lab-based training is sufficient for direct lab to field transfer of a robotic raspberry picker 4 .
Our journal is only a tiny part of the picture.We thank the many other men and women who work hard to create equal opportunities in different settings, from schools to higher education institutes and corporate settings.We also thank those who recognise and support women through additional life challenges such as those with caring responsibilities and those who are coping with menopause, to enable them to continue to make significant contributions in the workplace.Keeping diversity, equity and inclusion at the forefront of our minds will lead to diverse teams of the future creating exciting technologies and engineering solutions such as those described above, that will benefit us all.
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution

4 . 0
International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material.If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.To view a copy of this license, visit http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.© Springer Nature Limited 2023