Fostering a culture of diversity, equity/fairness, and inclusion

Our Commitment: With Research Square Company culture as our cornerstone and fairness as our foundation, we are committed to building an increasingly diverse workforce and supporting a fair and inclusive workplace at every level of our organization. We continue to work toward this goal by listening, learning, and educating ourselves and by changing our behaviors based on what we learn to improve our workplace and better serve the global research community.

We strive to cultivate a highly diversified workforce in all dimensions of our organization and across the entire employee lifecycle. We exhibit our commitment to this goal through the following actions:

• Identifying internal and external diversity initiatives.
  
• Developing and initiating recruitment outreach programs to schools and organizations serving underrepresented groups, including Historically Black Colleges and Universities.
  
• Highlighting and celebrating existing diversity within our company.
  

We are committed to providing fair opportunities for all our employees. We strive to do this by taking the following actions:

• Ensuring that our compensation policies and practices are fair and equitable.
  
• Offering professional development opportunities, such as promotions, networking, mentorship, and projects, as equitably and transparently as possible.
  
• Auditing available online resources regarding inclusion, fairness, and other DEI goals and sharing select resources and references with the company.
  
• Evaluating and redesigning our current mentorship program to ensure the use of best practices that are free from bias.
  

We aim to foster a culture in which all people feel included, valued, and comfortable bringing their authentic selves to work. As a member of the Coalition for Diversity and Inclusion in Scholarly Communications, we plan to achieve this goal by taking the following actions:

• Providing training and resources related to inclusion and unconscious bias at every level of the organization.
  
• Launching self-organized, self-led Employee Resource Groups that will help to educate members of the company and increase the awareness and embracing of diversity at Research Square Company.
  
• Promoting a safe, healthy and welcoming environment where everyone feels a sense of belonging.
  
• Ensuring the use of accessible technology and resources, such as closed captions in all meetings.
  

• Support DEI initiatives at all levels of the organization, from top to bottom.
• Listen to employees across the organization to understand the existing challenges and identify potential solutions.
• Identify criteria for success and regularly share status updates with our workforce.
• Identify specific areas of potential improvement in our existing policies and practices.
• Continue to strive toward DEI goals and research third-party consultants to help us reach these goals.