LIBERTY Connect Fund: Funding for Research on Editorial Practices and Inclusion

Elisabeth Bethge has been awarded funding from the LIBERTY Connect Fund at Friedrich Schiller University Jena. The support will be used to prepare a larger external grant proposal and to lay the groundwork for her research project, “Diversity in Print: A cross-national study of diversity-oriented practices in academic journals.” Her work examines how DEI-related commitments in academic publishing translate into everyday editorial practices and how these practices shape whose voices, topics, and perspectives become visible in scholarly journals.

The project takes up the current zeitgeist in which DEI has become a highly visible and increasingly contested issue amid ongoing political shifts in higher education and public institutions. As DEI becomes increasingly polarized—actively supported in some contexts and challenged in others—academic publishing sits at a critical juncture. Decisions about policies, editorial governance, and what is prioritized or deprioritized in journals do not happen in a vacuum; they reflect and respond to wider political pressures and cultural debates.

In this sense, academic journals are not only channels for disseminating research; they are also key institutions that help define what counts as legitimate knowledge. While many journals publicly endorse diversity, equity, and inclusion, these commitments may remain normative, symbolic, unevenly implemented, or constrained by entrenched norms of “excellence,” peer review cultures, and institutional incentives. As a result, certain scholars and research agendas may gain visibility more easily than others with consequences for career trajectories, research funding, and the broader direction of knowledge production.

The planned research explores these dynamics by linking journals’ DEI practices to patterns of representation, editorial sense making and thematic visibility across a large dataset, alongside the organizational and political conditions under which editorial decisions are made. By examining how journals respond to these pressures and contradictions, the project aims to clarify how scientific visibility is structured today and what is at stake for equitable knowledge production in the years ahead.