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Research organisations are stepping up efforts to end all forms of discrimination, says Lidia Borrell-Damian
Publicly funded research and innovation systems are increasingly concerned with the values at the centre of their policies. In Europe, while the focus and breadth of these values may vary between organisations and countries, there are also many commonalities.
In 2021, as part of a new strategic focus on contributing to the evolution of research culture, Science Europe, together with the research funders and performers that make up its members, set about making these common values explicit. A framework with six values for the organisation of research was created. These are: autonomy and freedom; care and collegiality; collaboration; integrity and ethics; openness and transparency; and equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI).
This month, Science Europe broadened its activities in this area, publishing a Practical Guide to Supporting Diversity in Research Environments. The new guide reflects an evolution of institutional approaches towards wider social representation in research environments, from balanced representation of men and women, towards a broader array of characteristics, including sexual orientation, ethnicity and social background. Support for diversity in research environments also means recognising a wider range of research fields, activities and ideas.
In this conceptual frame, identifying and recognising diversity is a prerequisite for inclusion, and a stepping stone towards equity in research.
Two principles underpin the development and implementation of such policies. The first is that fostering EDI is a moral imperative for publicly funded research organisations. The second is that diverse research environments produce higher-quality and more-impactful research.
Human resources
These may seem obvious principles, but putting them into practice is not easy; European research remains far from the vision of equity and equality set out in Science Europe’s guidelines.
The guide focuses on diversity from the perspective of human resources—the people who work in research environments. This aspect of diversity is core to the advancement of knowledge, to the development of better policies for careers in research, and to research assessment reform and open science.
The guide presents what diversity means to research organisations today; which measures they are implementing; and what challenges and barriers research funding and performing organisations currently face. It also gives examples of good practice.
The understanding of diversity in research is expanding. In addition to gender and age, a relatively small but growing number of research organisations are recognising the need for awareness and policies around factors such as socioeconomic background, sexual orientation and disability. Organisations must continually scrutinise their own understanding of diversity and communicate openly what they are doing about it.
All the research organisations surveyed for the guide are taking action to promote gender balance. In addition, 86 per cent are taking some form of action to improve the inclusion and accommodation of people belonging to other underrepresented groups or with special circumstances, such as absences from work due to sickness, disability or military service.
The collection and use of data to support policy and practice in EDI remains a key aspect—and a bottleneck. The data that are needed can be highly sensitive, and care must be taken in their handling and use, as in other areas relating to social, medical and health considerations.
When research organisations deem data important for their evidence base, they must be able to collect and use them with the necessary safeguards in place. Equally, a lack of data should not be a barrier to action.
Focus on ‘belonging’
The launch of the practical guide marks the start of a new phase in the development of policies and actions in national research funding and performing institutions across Europe.
Following the recognition of diversity’s importance, Science Europe and its members will now turn to the broader concept of EDI and the connections between the different elements of diversity, a concept known as intersectionality.
An intersectional approach is challenging, but many are already working on it, and Science Europe will establish partnerships to build on existing knowledge.
This will remain part of a broader perspective on the advancement of research culture, in which consideration of ‘belonging’—moving from EDI to EDIB—will play an important role.
It is not only the recognition and inclusion of underrepresented groups in research systems that matters, but also the sense that they belong there.
Lidia Borrell-Damian is the secretary general of Science Europe
This article also appeared in Research Europe