The war in Ukraine is impacting our colleagues in scholarly publishing – We set up the Supporting Ukrainian Editorial Staff program to provide editorial staff in Ukraine with the help they need
The invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 had heavily impacted the scientific activity and the production of knowledge in this country. The extension of the war zone across the country, and the destruction of civilian infrastructure did not spare higher education and research facilities. The Kharkiv University building was hit by a missile in the first days of the war, and the academic community struggles to continue working.
While, thanks to different programs such as Science for Ukraine, support was provided so far to Ukrainian researchers in all disciplines, this support is rarely extended to the other types of personnel working alongside researchers in knowledge production ; such as librarians, editorial staff, technicians and administrative staff at universities, research institutions and infrastructures.
SUES – Supporting Ukrainian Editorial Staff – is an initiative from several European organisations in scholarly communication: IBL-PAN (PL), OPERAS (BE), DOAJ (UK), OAPEN-DOAB (NL), EIFL (NL), AEUP (FR), with the support of a group of 30 French editors and publishers. It aims at supporting specifically all those who work at dissemination and communication knowledge in the scholarly publishing sector because they are also an essential component of the Ukrainian scientific life and culture.
SESU – Soutien à l’Edition Savante en Ukraine – is a group of more than 30 professionals from the french academic publishing sector, mostly from university presses and publishing departments of universities and research institutions.
SUES and SESU groups work hand in hand to support academic publishing in Ukraine.