Marcia Rangel Candido, Associate Editor of the journal DADOS, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil, and Integrated Researcher at the Centro de Investigação e Estudos de Sociologia (CIES) of the Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (Iscte), Lisboa, Portugal
Luiz Augusto Campos, Editor-in-Chief of the journal DADOS and Professor at the Instituto de Estudos Sociais e Políticos (IESP) of the Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (UERJ), Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil
The open science movement has progressed in different ways around the world, which relates to the varied developments of scientific communication structures in each region. One of the aspects that stands out most in this sense is that, in the Global South, most scientific publications are historically made available in open access; while, in the Global North, this is still a practice under implementation.
These regions also present variations in the implementation of open data policies, considering that there are different norms and legislation on the subject at national or regional level. On the other hand, a recently published report indicated a globally shared problem: little attention to gender issues in open science studies, evaluations and policies (Genderaction, 2019). The same can be said for other inequalities, such as those of geographical origin.
In 2023, the SciELO Program celebrated its 25 years in a week with the theme “Open Science with IDEA”. The acronym represents Impact, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility.
Among the conferences, inequality between geographical regions gained prominence, with special importance to investment in open science from the perspective of Latin America, which developed a broad open access system, but at the same time was subject to many disparities, both in terms of technological infrastructure and geopolitics of knowledge, that is, receiving less prestige in its publications regarding metrics created by Global North countries, such as the impact factor hierarchies of large international repositories.
The SciELO Network has also promoted diversity events and working groups that address specific problems, such as the implementation of accessibility in academic journals. More recently, a joint work by the SciELO team and its collaborators sought to translate into Portuguese and Spanish the Toolkit for Journal Editors and Publishers: Building Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility in Editorial Roles and Peer Review, which is to be released in these languages. The instrument, created by the Coalition for Diversity & Inclusion in Scholarly Communications (C4DISC), lists a series of recommendations for editors and reviewers to help promote diversity, some of which relate to the precepts of open science.
As editors of an academic journal, we have sought to remain attentive to these debates. The journal DADOS follows a series of suggestions pointed out by C4DISC, such as the indication of defending gender and race diversity in its editorial scope, the disclosure of demographic information about submissions and article authorship, the diversification of its editorial board and invitation to reviewers, the preference for accepting articles with diverse authorship in case of doubt or tie between opinions, among others.
Regarding open science and diversity, we highlight a recent monitoring in DADOS, which is particularly important for areas such as sociology, political science and international relations. We have dedicated ourselves to following gender distinctions in database submission.
In these social science disciplines, gender inequalities tend to present themselves in a particular way. Political science, more associated with quantitative methods than sociology, for example, usually has a lower presence of women among stable job positions in universities; while sociology, more regularly built by qualitative approaches, has a more balanced presence of men and women (Candido, 2024). This differentiation has specific implications regarding the possibilities of opening data.
The replicability editorship of DADOS, which has Bruno Schaefer as responsible, estimated that there is a majority of men among those who made databases available in the latest editions of the journal. From the analysis of 129 articles published since 2021, the year in which the journal created its repository in Harvard Dataverse, the preliminary survey showed, however, that men are equally in majority among the authors of approved manuscripts, which helps explain their predominance also in the dissemination of open data.
On the other hand, when observing the proportion in each group regarding the submission of databases, women come out ahead: 60% of the articles they led in authorship made the databases available, while this proportion is 58% for men. This signals that, at least in the case of the journal, women have not shown greater resistance to the open access and data transparency policy. The problem is that they submit less and publish less (Campos and Candido, 2021).
As diversity is one of the aspects we value most in science, we defend, like the Coalition for Diversity & Inclusion in Scholarly Communications, the continuous monitoring of demographic factors in publications.
In this participation in SciELO’s Special Week, we reinforce, once again, our commitment to open science with IDEA. In the next posts, we discuss the adoption of preprints and the development of the DADOS podcast, with contributions from our two science communication assistants, respectively, Daniela Lisbôa and Giovanna Monteiro-Macedo. We also circulate a list with recent articles on inequalities and a balance on the use of social networks to make visible the work of the journal and its authors. Happy reading!
References
C4DISC. Focused Toolkit for Journal Editors and Publishers: Building Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility in Editorial Roles and Peer Review [online]. Coalition for Diversity & Inclusion in Scholarly Communications. 2024 [viewed 4 August 2025]. Available from: https://doi.org/10.21428/77410d6b.91056a07
CANDIDIO, M.R. and CAMPOS, L.A. Where is Diversity Heading in Open Science and Scientific Publications? [online]. SciELO in Perspective: Humanities, 2025 [viewed ]. Available from: https://humanas.blog.scielo.org/en/2025/08/04/where-is-diversity-heading-in-open-science-and-scientific-publications/
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