The Guidelines on Inclusive Language and Images in Scholarly Communication are an expansion of C4DISC’s Toolkits for Equity project. They came together due to the growing need for more comprehensive and global guidelines to help authors, editors, and reviewers recognize the use of language and images that are inclusive and culturally sensitive. As the Guidelines will be updated annually, we call on the entire scholarly publishing community to help grow and improve them over time by suggesting new references, recommendations, and resources. You can do so by contacting us at [email protected]. 

Use of This Toolkit

The content contained within each of the Toolkits for Equity in Scholarly Publishing is for informational and educational purposes only. It is NOT intended to be used as legal advice. Always research local, state, and national laws and consult with a lawyer before making any legal decisions regarding workplace antiracism.

This document is published under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license. As a result, you are free to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and remix, transform, and build upon the material. However, we ask that if you are adapting or customizing the content that you not substantially dilute the language or materially alter the spirit in which the content was originally written. We welcome others’ efforts to customize these guides to reflect their own specific contexts (regional, professional, etc.).

You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use. You may NOT use the material for commercial purposes. If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original.

This license does NOT extend to third-party content, text or images, that has been cited. Please contact the original authors of any third-party content if you wish to reuse or adapt.

If you are using this toolkit, we’d love to hear about it so we can track its impact in our community. Please contact the publishers directly at [email protected] to let us know how the toolkits have helped you or your organization.

Collection DOI: 10.21428/77410d6b.6fa879ce

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