Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
Epigeum takes a collaborative approach to creating interactive online courses designed to support universities and colleges around the world. The communities we serve are extraordinarily diverse and we strive to ensure our content reflects that.
Historically, publishing – including our own – has centred on a narrow a range of voices and experiences. We are committed to doing better, and to being honest when we fall short.
Our Pledges
Represent diverse experiences. We pledge to design content that reflects all communities of people, including those shaped by race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, disability, culture, language, and geography. Our aim is for all learners to find their experiences reflected in our content.
Showcase a diversity of voices. We pledge to work with contributors from a broad range of academic, cultural, and geographic contexts. Our editorial and review processes are designed to be fair, transparent, and supportive, ensuring that contributors are not disadvantaged by dominant academic norms.
Diverse and equitable referencing. We pledge to work with our contributors to ensure that their content cite or reference work from a wide range of scholarly sources, in particular the work of minority racial and ethnic groups, women and other genders, LGBTQIA+ people, and people with disabilities. We commit to embed equitable referencing expectations clearly in our contributor guidance.
Anti-discriminatory practice. We pledge to continue to create course content that promotes anti-racist and anti-discrimination practices and educates users on the latest and best approaches to tackling prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination.
Inclusive design and accessibility. We pledge to ensure that accessibility and inclusive design underpin our product development. We are committed to maintaining a minimum of WCAG AA conformance through regular accessibility audits and clearly defined roadmaps for improvement. Accessibility checks are built into our editorial workflows, and we actively consider how our content can support learners with a broad range of accessibility, cognitive, and learning differences.
Continuous learning and improvement. We are committed to ensuring that our own understanding keeps pace with our external commitments. This means ongoing learning on unconscious bias – particularly within editorial and review processes – and creating space for our team to reflect and be challenged.
Be transparent and accountable. We will be open and honest about any areas in which we fall short and always invite feedback from our customers and partners. We will also provide a clear and confidential route for contributors and collaborators to raise concerns about how they or their work have been treated during the editorial process.
If you have comments or feedback, please direct them to epigeum@sagepub.co.uk.