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EASE > Communities > Special Interest Committees > Environment and Sustainability Committee > About this Committee

Environment and Sustainability Committee

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by the United Nations member states in 2015, is as a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure peace and prosperity for all.

The 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are integrated—they recognize that action in one area will affect outcomes in others, and that development must balance social, economic and environmental sustainability. It can be achieved only by coordinated global actions. Every individual, company, institution and organisation, whether large or small, public or private, needs to contribute – ‘think global, act local’.

This call was also recognised by publishers. In October 2020, the SDG Publishers Compact was launched by the UN and the International Publishers Association, with 10 action points that publishers, publishing associations and journal editors could commit to undertaking to reach the SDGs by 2030.

E&S Committee objectives

In order to support the SDG Publishers Compact, the EASE Environment and Sustainability (E&S) Committee was established in Spring 2021 with the following objectives and key tasks:

  • To capitalise on the momentum created at the 15th EASE Conference on the theme of sustainability in publishing and editing, by broadening the membership of the Committee to include experts in the field who can drive the initiative forward.
  • To develop a strategy and action plan which would be reviewed annually and set goals for the next period.
  • To promote the EASE environmental manifesto widely, amongst EASE members and the wider publishing and editing communities, and encourage those people to share it in their own networks. Download here
  • To collaborate with other organisations and appropriate initiatives to maximise synergies.
  • To review and ensure the Association’s own environmental policy is up-to-date and set new targets for the next period to meet our aim of supporting the SDG Publishers Compact.

Projects in progress and ideas for future activities

  • Finalise the EASE SDG checklist into a simple app for use by publishers or journal editors. Present at the 18th EASE Conference in Oslo in May 2025.
  • Develop recommendations on how to reduce the environmental impact of conferences. Present at the 18th EASE Conference in Oslo in May 2025.
  • Create a calendar of SDG-related events or activities, in order to promote the goals. Work in progress.
  • Monitor and evaluate environmental and sustainability policies and process used by others in our industry and communicate good practices to our members.
  • Advocate for environmental awareness and sustainability practices in editing and publishing.

Activities and achievements – 2023-24

December 2024

EASE resources were added to the IPA Dashboard.

November 2024

Development and testing of a prototype EASE SDG checklist with recommended steps for journals and publishers, aligned with SDGs, commenced.

October 2024

The article Sustainable Development Goals in academic publishing: impacts of SDG Publishers Compact and EASE Environmental Manifesto was published in October 2024, showing the results of the EASE/HESI Survey.

September 2024

The E&S Committee organised a webinar about the use of AI as a sustainable writing and translation aid in scholarly publishing on 17 September 2024, where findings of the OPERAS Translations and Open Science project were presented.

February 2024

The results of the EASE/HESI Survey conducted from October to December 2022 were reported at the EASE Webinar – Walking the walk: assessing our commitment to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, held on 20 February 2024. The results of the survey were compared with those of the annual survey launched at the same time by the International Publishers Association. The impact of the activities proposed in the EASE Environmental Manifesto was also presented and discussed, along with the STM’s SDG Sustainability Roadmap. The Roadmap serves as a toolkit of resources for scholarly publishers that can help them reach the Sustainable Development Goals.

September 2023

During PUBMET2023 Conference at the University of Zadar, E&S Committee organised a panel session: Environmental awareness and sustainability in scholarly communication, presenting best practices and recommendations from leading associations and publisher regarding sustainability, in collaboration with the Croatian Association for Scholarly Communication (CROASC or ZNAK in Croatian).

July 2023

The E&S Committee organised a session at the ISMTE 2023 Global Event: Harnessing leadership and accountability for a sustainable publishing industry, which aimed at making Aspire 2023 participants aware of the recent developments and of the opportunities for integrating sustainability-, environment-, and climate-related actions in the publishing ecosystem.

April 2023

The E&S Committee co-organised the EASE / STM / HESI / SDG Publishers Compact Fellows Sustainable Solutions Summit in April 2023, during which best practices in sustainable publishing were presented and discussed, as well as available resources and tools.

View the achievements and plans of our Committee as at December 2023.