Our paper “Ten Simple Rules for Pushing Boundaries of Inclusion at Academic Events” has been published at https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1011797 and is openly accessible for everyone to read!
If reading isn’t your thing, the lead authors have even created a promotional video:
I don’t publish papers very often, writing and authoring is not my strength – so how come I’m mentioned on this one?
This project came out of OLS cohort 7 and was led by Siobhan Hall and Dan Kochin. They hosted discussion sessions on inclusive events and as someone with strong opinions on these topics, I obviously joined the initial sessions and thought I could help getting the discussion translated into a paper.
Did I actually contribute much? I joined further discussions on some of the rules and helped shape them, but to be honest, I think I learned much more than I helped. Siobhan and Dan recruited an incredible team and collected amazing case studies so my very privileged experience of attending events did not add much. However, while I’m not good at writing (confirmed now once again), looking through drafts for consistency and spending hours editing references is something I’m good at. Who knew that librarian skills do come in handy?!
So after almost a year of work, it’s great to see the paper published and nice to be part of a list of people that I have admired in the past. And yes, I had to leave academia and be independent to find the time to work on a paper on a topic close to my heart. I hope it is useful to many folks out there and gets read widely.
Patricia Herterich 