Corporate social responsibility

At Taylor & Francis we’re committed to creating a positive impact. Our purpose is to foster human progress through knowledge. For us, corporate responsibility means delivering on this core purpose while taking account of our social, economic, and environmental impact.

Through the content we publish, the policies we adopt, and the partnerships we build, we aim to reduce inequalities and improve access to knowledge. We have specific programs and commitments designed to bring down our environmental footprint, contribute to the communities we serve, and provide a great place to work. These include:

Accessibility. We prioritize accessibility, ensuring our products, platforms, and websites are accessible to all.
Community involvement. We make a meaningful contribution to the communities we serve – globally, nationally, and locally.
Development initiatives. We participate in development initiatives that support researchers in developing countries and regions.
Sustainability. We want our publishing to be sustainable and have a positive impact on society – not a negative one on the planet.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. We’re committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion among our colleagues and the communities we serve.

As part of our ongoing commitment to making a positive difference to communities around the world, we’ve joined the Business for Societal Impact (B4SI) Network, a forum that helps organizations effectively measure and manage their social impact.

Accessibility – making our content easily accessible to everyone

We want everyone to be able to access our resources.

We’re committed to ensuring all our products, platforms, and websites are accessible to as wide an audience as possible. We’re continually improving the quality and accessibility of our content to address the needs of all customers, and support them to reach their highest potential.

To guide us in our efforts, we use the Americans with Disabilities Act (1990), the US Government Section 508 Standards, the UK Disability Discrimination Act (1995), and W3C’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0/2.1. We’re working toward the A and AA compliance levels of the WCAG 2.1.

We’re proud to partner with advocates of accessibility, including BookShare in the US, Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) in the UK, and the AccessText Network, which provides accessible materials to students at post-secondary institutions in the US and Canada. Between these three partnerships, 95% of our eBook catalogue is available in PDF or ePub formats globally.

We make meaningful contributions to the communities we serve.

We aim to promote literacy and access to books, journals, and learning materials, while deepening the connections with our local communities. Our community involvement initiatives are global, national, and local, and include:

Corporate fundraising. Walk the World is our biggest and most international initiative, where colleagues around the world get together, join a walk, and raise money for charity.
Charity partnerships. We work with a number of charities, including initiatives at Taylor & Francis India that support children and adults with visual impairment, autism, and Down Syndrome.
Equipment donations. We donate laptops to a variety of local charities, from Asylum Welcome to Getting Oxfordshire Online, as well as to Ukrainian children fleeing war.
Corporate volunteering. We actively encourage our staff to engage with a charity or local community of their choice through our volunteer programs, and offer four days’ paid leave per year for this.

We support researchers in developing countries and regions.

Global challenges require global research. Access to good quality research is essential for education, innovation, economic growth, and climate action. That’s why we’re committed to development initiatives that support librarians, authors, and researchers in the Global South.

Taylor & Francis was a founding member of Publishers for Development (PfD), and is the only international commercial academic publisher with an editorial team within Africa. We support librarians, authors, and researchers in developing countries and regions in the following ways:

Access to research. Access to research is essential for achieving a more equitable world. We have partnerships with Research4Life (R4L), the International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (INASP), and the Emergency Access Initiative (EAI), plus our own Special Terms for Authors and Researchers (STAR) program.
Publishing your research. We’re here to support you on your publishing journey. We’ve partnered with AuthorAID, Electronic Information for Libraries (EIFL), and The Conversation Africa (TCA). Our own initiatives also include open access discounts and waivers, and our dedicated Author Services website.
Training and workshops. Training is essential to build capacity, resilience, and opportunity. We provide learning opportunities from online resources for learning and teaching to training partnerships to seminars run by our local offices.

We’re committed to sustainable publishing.

Print publishing can have a significant environmental footprint. We’re taking active steps to minimize this, and embed sustainability into everything we do. We’re decarbonizing our business operations, building a sustainable and responsible supply chain, and participating in industry-wide sustainability initiatives.

We want to have a positive impact on society – not a negative one on the planet. We focus on the areas where we can make the biggest contribution: our operations, the content and knowledge we provide, and the communities in which we work.

We call our sustainability program FasterForward. It has three areas of focus:

Faster to Zero – how we’re reducing our environmental impact
Sustainability Inside – how we’re contributing to the achievement of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through scholarly research and publishing
Impact Multiplier – how we’re reducing inequalities in the communities we serve and creating a positive impact.

Our Sustainability Hub shows how we’re becoming a more sustainable, positive impact business – and how we connect the communities we serve with the knowledge to do the same.

We’re committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) in the workplace.

We believe that diversity is a strength. Bringing together a diverse range of people, communities, and opinions is beneficial to the customers and communities we serve, to our colleagues and, ultimately, to humankind.

We’re proud to be an equal opportunity employer, and strive to promote a more equitable organization. We’ve made progress, but recognize that we still have work to do. We’re committed to ensuring that colleagues around the world can contribute, be heard, and be inspired.

We have a range of company-wide Colleague Resource Groups (CRGs), which are open to everyone. Each network is designed to provide support and opportunities, a space to share experiences, inform business programs, and raise awareness of important issues. These include networks focused on support for gender balance, LGBTQIA+ colleagues and allies, colleagues with disabilities, and those from ethnic minorities.