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By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
International Day of Education
Timed to coincide with today’s UNESCO-led International Day of Education program (January 24), Springer Nature’s offices in London, New York, and Berlin have announced a new digital “content hub” supportive of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) No. 4.
Image: UNESCO
That fourth goal calls for the world’s nations and people to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.”
Springer’s hub opened today is its 17th such Sustainable Development Goal-related portal, under the umbrella of the company’s SDG publishing program, which, according to Springer Nature’s material, “aims to connect the researchers who are tackling the world’s toughest challenges with the practitioners in policy and business who desperately need those insights to achieve their goals in improving the world, by making our publishing activities more visible to our key communities through a variety of channels.”
Languages in which content is collated by the hubs include English, French, and Japanese. Today’s addition to the series being the 17th—and there are 17 goals—the company now has created a portal relative to each of the full group of goals.
Springer’s media messaging says that since 2015, the company has published “nearly 400,000 articles and chapters on SDG-related topics” including health, poverty, justice, and biodiversity. The various SDG-themed portals or hubs gather Springer content relative to those topics and display them, highlighting various issues and trends in each field.
Material populating the newly opened education hub includes selected content published under Springer Nature imprints Palgrave, Springer, Nature, and BMC. And the content there is divided into four sections: interviews with researchers; highlights from books and journals; blog posts created by authors and editors; and collections and calls for papers.
As the portal goes live today, for example, the publishers are pointing visitors to an interview with Leona M. English of Canada’s St. Francis Xavier University on “The Importance of Gender Justice and Equality in Global Education.” And there’s “A Focus on International Education and Global Citizenship” in a researcher interview with Namrata Sharma of the State University of New York’s (SUNY) department of curriculum and instruction.
Along with journals, relevant books from the company are highlighted including Stuart Tannock’s Educating for Radical Social Transformation in the Climate Crisis from Palgrave Macmillan (2021) and The Promise of Higher Education: Essays in Honor of 70 Years of IAU (the International Association of Universities), a book published by Springer and edited by Hilligje van’t Land. Andreas Corcoran, and Diana-Camelia Iancu.
Image: Springer Nature, ‘SDG4: Quality Education’
Jones: ‘The Pursuit of Quality Education’
In a prepared statement for today’s opening of the content hub on educational issues, the head of Springer Nature’s SDG publishing program, Nicola Jones, is quoted, saying, “Since 2016, Springer Nature has worked to advance the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals through a dedicated publishing program with the aim of publishing more of the research that will help the goals to be achieved and getting it to the people that can make this happen.
Nicola Jones
“In the past year, enormous progress has been made, culminating in the launch of our final SDG content hub for SDG4, Quality Education.
“SDG 4, Quality Education, is central to the success of the 16 others: as publishers of resources and content for teachers, educators, and students we firmly believe all research, advancement, and development must proceed from education.
“In addition to the resources we publish for teachers and educators around the world through Macmillan Education, education researchers have published a wealth of relevant research with Springer Nature in recent years, so we’re delighted to announce the launch of this resource repository, to support the vital work happening across the globe to advance the pursuit of quality education.”
Publishing Perspectives’ regular readers will recall the advent during Frankfurter Buchmesse 2020 of the International Publishers Association’s SDG Publishers’ Compact in association with the United Nations.
Debra Rowe
Today, the president of the US Partnership for Education for Sustainable Development, Debra Rowe, is quoted, saying, “The SDG Publishers Compact is designed to support a breadth and depth of commitments and actions aligning education and scholarly research with the SDGs.
“We also appreciate the participation of Springer Nature staff as fellows for the SDG Publishers Compact.
“Springer Nature, as a signatory of the compact, is providing substantial contributions that will enhance the work being done by educators, researchers and practitioners to address the Sustainable Development Goals. What Springer Nature has done with its integration of SDGs into so much of its activities, including via its educational materials, its hubs and its facilitation of enhanced collaboration, is helping to catalyze solutions for the SDGs globally.
“Springer Nature’s new hub for SDG4 is a very important and welcome addition.”
Springer Nature’s SDG publishing program is part of its corporate responsibility program. More on that umbrella is here.
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