The inaugural APA Sustainability Survey results have been released that show that many Australian publishers are taking steps to improve the environmental sustainability of their organisations. Over half of the publishers who responded have appointed a person or team to lead their company’s sustainability agenda, and over a quarter are setting targets to reduce energy, waste and plastic consumption, as well as to increase recycling.
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Tori is a reading organization in Amsterdam that is committed to making a more inclusive children’s book landscape. Books and picture books are used as windows (understanding about others) and mirrors (recognition) for children.
Tori’s aim is to have a more inclusive children’s book landscape, so that children discover at a young age that they are part of a colorful society and see diversity as a strength
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The Black Archives is a historical archive and cultural center for black heritage in Amsterdam. The archive consists of artifacts and more than 10,000 books, mainly black writers and scientists. The books cover topics including racism, slavery and (de)colonization, gender and feminism, social sciences, Suriname, the former Netherlands Antilles, South America and Africa.
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Achieving business growth is traditionally done through a combination of growing revenue and reducing costs. The hypothesis is that a tradeoff exists between making sustainable or net zero choices, and business growth. This whitepaper seeks to explore the economic challenges and opportunities of using environmental sustainability as a driver for business growth and the role finance should play in helping publishing become net zero.
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Editis is a publishing company, based in France. Our group signed the SDG Global Compact in 2012.
The greenhouse gas emissions report is based on 2022 activities in order to build a consistent reduction plan
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MDPI’s SDG Hub provides thousands of recent open–access content on SDGs in the form of scientific articles and books.
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The CACTUS Mental Health Survey is the largest and most diverse global survey on mental health among researchers. 13000+ researchers across 169 countries participated in this survey, talking about joy and stress triggers in academia and the need for a more positive, nurturing research culture. Insights from this survey have contributed to sustaining an important conversation on researcher mental health and prompts research institutions to take tangible steps towards helping researchers thrive.
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SRL Publishing is the world’s first climate positive publisher, supporting projects which have the highest verification standards around the world, and also planting trees to replace the number of trees used for their products.
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The Association of Canadian Publishers (ACP) released the results of its 2018 survey measuring diversity in the English-language Canadian book publishing industry – the first survey of its kind in the country. Key findings of the survey were that people with indigenous and non-white backgrounds are underrepresented in the industry, with 82 percent of the respondents having identified as white. The survey also included data on age, gender identity, sexual orientation and disability.
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In 2016, the Norwegian Publishers Association began to work on the topic “The green book trade.” Their goal has been to make it easier for publishers to choose their suppliers based on an internationally recognised set of criteria and guidelines. They developped a guide to the sustainable procurement of paper, an introduction on to procurement policies, a list of tools and measures to prevent the use of controversially sourced paper, and a system for rating individual books and paper quality.
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The UNESCO Global Education Coalition is a platform for collaboration and exchange to protect the right to education during the unprecedented disruption brought by the Covid-19 pandemic. It aims to support countries in scaling up their best distance learning practices and reaching children and you who are most at risk. Publishers are among the coalition members and will be key in the effort to strengthen and enrich the content brought to children who are learning away from school.
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In 2015, Lee and Low Books released a survey on diversity conduced in 2015. The survey aimed to establish concrete statistics regarding diversity in the publishing workforce, and ask the question: if the people who work in publishing are not a diverse group, how can diverse voices be represented in books? It concluded that the workforce in North America was overwhelmingly white and straight. When the survey was repeated in 2019, the numbers reflected essentially the same demographic statistics.
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In 2017, academic publisher Springer Nature launched their Grand Challenges programme (GCP) aiming to help develop solutions to some of the most pressing challenges of our time with sustainable cities as one of their target challenges.
An example of this research includes a study that looked at 185 Chinese cities of different sizes over a period of seven years. It concluded that a reduction of air and water pollution had the effect of increasing direct foreign investment inflows.
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In 2017, the UK PA launched an industry-wide 10-point action plan to ensure that publishing reflects the UK population. As part of this plan, the PA committed to do an annual survey of the workforce demographics of UK publishing houses, the first of which took place in 2019. The survey gathered information on diversity, inclusion, and workforce demographics – such as gender balance, women in leadership roles, disabilities/impairments, mental health, education level, sexual orientation, and more.
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The campaign aims to get all children in England reading well by the age of 11 and to have all children achieving good levels of language, early literacy and reading development by 2025. In essence, the mission of the campaign is to eradicate illiteracy for the next generation in the UK.
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The International Water Association (IWA) has its own publishing programme, IWA Publishing, that works to further knowledge on water resources. Their programme includes 15 peer reviewed journals and 800 books.
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In 2005, Egmont, a Danish publisher, implemented the Egmont Social Compliance Programme to ensure that all suppliers respect human rights and safeguard the salary conditions and safety of their workers. The programme includes, for instance, the mapping of manufacturers; their health and safety assessments, social audits, and their compliance to the Egmont code of conduct. The resulting information, along with a report of their CO2 emissions has been compiled into a report.
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The Lancet has embraced the SDG goals in a series of Lancet Commissions specifically addressing the SDG goal of good health and wellbeing. The commissions outline the current progress, challenges and solutions that are needed from the research community and society in order to achieve the 2030 SDG 3 targets. Commissions include a review of the “Elimination of viral hepatitis by 2030” and “A UNAIDS–Lancet Commission on Defeating AIDS—Advancing Global Health”.
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