How Emerald Publishing Has Embedded the Sustainable Development Goals Publisher Compact Into Its Business Strategy

Abstract

Emerald Publishing has been committed to supporting meaningful, real world impact—what we call our Real Impact journey—for several years and is dedicated to equality in its broadest sense. Since 2018, we have made several conscious moves to challenge the status quo in the sector, and to think differently about our content program. To date, we have launched the Real Impact Manifesto,1 become a signatory of DORA,2 launched Emerald Open Research3 to advance open publishing solutions, and in 2019, launched our Emerald Insight4 platform which gives the potential for content types to be reimagined through multiple consumer lenses. Our motivation for making these changes, contributing to shifting research culture, and driving impact is continuously dictated by the world around us, and if anything, heightened by the pandemic we are all living through. Despite the many aims expressed by the United Nations and international governments in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Publisher Compact,5 as a community, we are not making rapid enough progress. It is the duty of research institutes, publishers, and funders to come together to collectively meet these challenges as they pertain to the research ecosystem, and with far greater urgency. Ultimately, we all have a responsibility to help solve global challenges, and signing the SDG Publisher Compact in early 2021 was the natural step in Emerald’s journey to support real impact. The Compact is designed to inspire action among publishers and accelerate progress to achieve the SDGs by 2030.[1] As a founding signatory of the Compact, we aspire to […]