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Researchers May 21, 2021
Ways in Which Academic Publishing Can be More Trans-Inclusive

There’s a global shift that has been going on in the past decade, more actively than at any time in history. This development has impacted every industry, including academia, and sometimes the pace of transformation can be hard to keep up with. Yet, the powerful focus of billions of people on ensuring equal rights means that there are some parts that can’t be ignored and must be transitioned into as thoroughly and quickly as possible, such as making academic publishing trans-inclusive.

Some journal policies have already begun to adjust to this new way of addressing individual rights, but others still have their agendas set in the dark ages of previous thinking. It’s not a difficult endeavor to switch to more trans-inclusive policies and procedures, but fostering awareness of this issue is the first step to solving the problem.

EDIS - The Organization That Gauges Equality

Changing your name and other aspects of your life when you transition is hard enough, but one of the difficulties that researchers in this boat face is the problem of getting previous publications updated with their new identity. With the significant weight of scholarly impact relying heavily on publishing works regularly, this is no small problem.

Most individuals who transition into another gender prefer to keep their personal lives separate from their professional ones. However, if they always have to tell a funder or publishing agency that they do have prior work attributed to them in their previous identity, this causes them to have to admit to something otherwise personal.

Organizations like EDIS have been established to work with those in the field of science and health research to ensure there is equality, diversity, and inclusion across the board. Changing your name after a gender transition is one of their focus points. Through professional networking activities and policy change attempts, these groups try to help those in this situation to get publishers to change their author names retroactively in order to ensure their new identities and old publications correspond correctly.

Current Policies and Practices in Journals

It’s a given that journals can’t always keep up with the changes in governmental laws and policies, but they should be trying. One of the newer questions is how to implement protocols when a researcher has previously published work through a journal, but then changed their name after going through a gender change.

It seems like a common sense procedure would be to issue a correction to the author’s name. This is the policy that is followed when there’s a mistake after publishing or the name was incorrect when the journal was first released. However, with this situation, the name was correct, but the author wants it changed anyway. The journal doesn’t always have to follow through on this request if there wasn’t an error on their end. It’s a matter of time and expense that’s unnecessary, according to many publishing companies.

But if journals want to be trans-inclusive and show respect to their authors, they should allow individuals to change their names without a lot of hassle. The fact is that if a researcher has two different names attributed to their scholarly reputation, it sets them up for discrimination that they might not otherwise have faced. Additionally, they can be passed up for funding grants or preferred career paths because they look like they have less experience than they do when their previous work isn’t linked to their name. It’s like starting over again from scratch, but in this case, their new identity doesn’t change their knowledge or previous accomplishments.

To make it fair, trans-inclusive publishing is necessary. Without the fix at the source, scientists have to put on their CVs and explain to potential funders or administrators why they actually have more experience than what is shown when their name is pulled up, and this becomes the perfect opportunity for discrimination to arise.

Ultimately, the policies and procedures have to be fixed within the journal itself, and some companies are on board with this. As they attempt to implement protocols to make this a simple process, the world takes one more step closer to becoming trans-inclusive.

Using Impactio to Showcase Professionalism

Regardless of any demographics like gender that might be an obstacle in your career, it’s important to showcase your professionalism. One way to do this is to choose the right program to put together your manuscript. When you use Impactio, it’s easy to get the job done well and efficiently.

With Impactio, compiling your finished product and putting it together for final submission is streamlined, since the platform has all the tools you need to take each step one at a time without headache. When there are no bumps in the road with your publication process, you can deal with the other stresses in your life easier. Regardless of your personal and other career obstacles, Impactio can free up your time and focus to take care of the important things in your life while still releasing your work with full professionalism!

Tags Academic PublishingJournalsResearchers
About the author
Jason Collins- Writer
Jason is a writer for many niche brands with experience “bringing stories to life” for both startups and corporate partners.
Jason Collins
Writer
Jason is a writer for many niche brands with experience “bringing stories to life” for both startups and corporate partners.
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