Silverchair’s mission is to change the world for the better by empowering creators and users of scholarly and professional knowledge to maximize their positive impact on humanity. Consistent with this mission, we are committed to the positive impact we have on our employees, our clients, our community, and the world. Below we highlight some of the ways we have put that corporate responsibility into action.
Environmental Responsibility
At Silverchair we aim to minimize our environmental footprint through a variety of ethical, economical, and efficient practices.
- Sustainable Office Practices: Our flexible, hybrid work environment reduces carbon emissions by allowing employees to work from home, while our convenient downtown office location makes it easy for employees who wish to come to the office to walk, bike, or use public transportation. As described in our Earth day post from 2020, we offer healthy, locally sourced food options at events and as part of our office snack program. We support our planet by striving for more efficient operations, cutting disposables, packaging and waste. We are continuously working toward a zero-waste office through recycling, an active composting program, and reusable kitchenware.
- Cloud-Based Servers & Paperless Operations: Silverchair’s software exists entirely in the cloud, which removes large amounts of energy waste from relying on physical servers. Our fully digital work processes (paperless finance, contract, and administrative practices) mean less physical waste and resources.
- Promotion & Awareness: We also work to actively promote the environmental efforts of our clients, raising awareness through resources like this Earth Day 2021 guest post from GSW and Oxford University Press’ launch of Oxford Open Energy.
Sustainable Events
The global halt in business travel due to the pandemic drastically reduced carbon emissions and highlights the environmental impact of in-person events. As such, we are committed to ensuring that the events we host build community without simultaneously tearing down the environment. Some of the efforts we make to that end include:
- Digital materials to reduce paper waste
- Sustainable swag & food/drink packaging
- Booking room blocks within walking distance of all venues
- Using local businesses for all food, drink, & materials
- Green venues: for example, our 2022 Client Forum was held at Charlottesville’s CODE Building, a LEED Gold+ certified building, and our 2023 and 2024 Platform Strategies events were held at The Eaton Workshop, LEED Gold rated and the first urban regenerative hotel meeting Regenerative Travel’s social & environmental standards
- Carbon offsetting of travel for all attendees via COTAP (Carbon Offsets to Alleviate Poverty)
Beyond our own events, we’ve also committed to offsetting the business travel of all our employees through donations.
Community
Now more than ever, the communities we are part of play a vital role in our continued success and quality of life. That’s why we work to intentionally foster our communities through active engagement.
- Charlottesville: Since our founding in 1993, Silverchair has been headquartered in Charlottesville, Virginia. Even with our shift to a full hybrid work model, our physical location in Charlottesville continues to influence and contribute to our culture. We participate actively in our Cville community through events, volunteering, and donations, and prioritize our support of local businesses. Our downtown office carries nitro cold brew from Snowing in Space, beer from Three Notch’d, wine from the Wine Guild, coffee from Trager Brothers, and much more. Our weekly company happy hours are designed to patronize our local business neighbors while convening our people to form deeper connections. We also use our storefront windows on the downtown pedestrian mall to display the work of local artists and organizations and participate actively in local organizations.
- Scholarly Publishing: Silverchair is a member of numerous industry organizations, working groups, and initiatives, actively building relationships and working with partners to improve our publishing community. We actively serve on boards and committees and are a regular supporter of the SSP Generations Fund, which provides sustainable funding for SSP’s Fellowship, Mentoring, and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs. In 2017, we formed the Silverchair Universe, a partner network of complementary industry vendors. We also host regular Publishing Working Groups and industry events, all designed to convene our communities to the benefit of all.
Accessibility
Silverchair has prioritized accessibility for years, having designed, developed, and hosted federal government sites that legally required 508 Compliance. Today, AA WCAG 2.1 compliance is instilled into our platform’s codebase, which supports over 1300 journals, 8 million articles, 370,000 proceedings, and 50,000 books. Based on a study by the World Bank, 15% of the world’s population experience some form of disability, so we know how essential accessibility is to our clients and their users.
Silverchair’s processes and roadmap are geared toward breaking down barriers to entry on all our products, propelling our clients’ content to greater reach and impact.
Security
Silverchair maintains an ISO 27001:2022 Certified Information Security Management System (ISMS) that governs all use and storage of client data within our internal systems and platform. The policies encompass Organizational Security, Asset Classification, Personnel Security, Communications and Operations Management, Access Control, Systems Development and Maintenance, Information Security Incident Management, Compliance, and Security Warranty.
Additionally, Silverchair is certified compliant with Payment Card Industry (PCI) Security Standards Council’s requirements for data protection. Though we do not handle any credit card information whatsoever, we are a gateway that redirects traffic to external sites that do handle client credit card information. For this reason, we maintain PCI compliance as part of our corporate commitment to security.
Employee Wellness
Silverchair is committed to supporting our team members not just as employees through professional development and role support, but also as whole people. This mindset is built into everything our company does, and includes wellness-focused communications, benefits offerings, corporate memberships, and more.
To help promote wellness, Silverchair provides employees with a free subscription to Calm, an app for meditation and mental fitness. Employees are given the flexibility of full-time or part-time employment to meet their personal needs. We also offer a hybrid workplace that gives employees the flexibility of remote work alongside convenient coworking and gathering spaces in a beautiful, historic building on Charlottesville’s downtown pedestrian mall. Our office space also provides rooms dedicated to wellness to support all aspects of employees’ wellbeing.
Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion
As a company that aims to innovate to improve the creation, distribution, and impact of scientific knowledge, our commitment to diversity and inclusion is rooted in the creation of a space for the intelligent, informed, and civil exchange of contrasting thoughts and ideas. That is, in order to deliver optimal value, we must attract and give voice to a wide variety of perspectives, including those from divergent functional, cultural, and social backgrounds and experiences.