History Workshop asks all contributors to complete an anonymous Equity and Diversity Monitoring form when their article is accepted for publication. The purpose of collecting this data is to enable HW to identify inequities, take positive action to redress them, and make our platform a space for the widest range of radical voices.
As a consequence, we aim to collect data that we can 1/ compare from year to year, internally and with other similar organisations and institutions, and 2/ take action on, particularly through our commissioning practices.
It is important for the data we collect to be comparable with relevant, publicly-available data compiled by universities, history departments, and educational organisations, and with the wider UK population. For ethnicity monitoring, for instance, public institutions use the categories selected by the Office of National Statistics for the Census, and recommended by them and the Race Disparity Unit. We recognise that these categories are limited in scope. They do not necessarily reflect all identities or capture all experiences of inequality amongst our contributors. All questions on the monitoring form include options to self-define or ‘prefer not to say’.
The principles of the UK GDPR – specifically purpose limitation and data minimisation – mean that we should ask for the least amount of data necessary for us to achieve defined and limited aims. As a result, we do not collect data on all ‘protected characteristics’ (as defined by the UK Equalities Act 2010). For example, we have chosen to collect data on career and career stage instead of age. The data that we are collecting will allow us to identify and take action on specific problems: for instance, a disproportionately low number of Black authors or access barriers faced by people with disabilities.
Responses are completely anonymous and all data is protected in accordance with ISO27001 and GDPR via Jisc Online Surveys. We will make cumulative anonymised data publicly available each year, along with an action plan based on our findings. We will also review our monitoring strategy annually.