LaFramboise "Gender" appendix Chapter 5 #1

Appendix #1 - Word Search for "gender"

{#5} D.LaFramboise The Delinquent Author - 
 "The Right Gender or the Right Country"

Donna LaFramboise made a big deal about the occurrence of "gender" in answers to the InterAcademy Council (IAC) Questionnaire, but when I read through the comments that my "gender" word search came up with collectively they seemed fairly ho-hum, with supportive voices as much as negative ones. 

Also worth considering here. 
Why do 100% of the authors need to be the best and the brightest.
Who says there isn't room for a small percentage of proteges participating without compromising the quality of the report  

Responses to the InterAcademy Council (IAC) Questionnaire

Committee to Review the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 

Word search for "gender" = 29 hits

http://reviewipcc.interacademycouncil.net/Comments.pdf

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p.28     2c. Selection of lead authors

It is good to see the care taken to get a good geographic, gender and discipline balance. Perhaps some governments need to be encouraged more to consider who within their country should be nominated. The Bureau also needs the possibilities of nominating some lead authors where there are particular gaps

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p. 50    2a. Scoping and identification of policy questions

This is one of the strong points of the process. Because of government involvement, IPCC reports the politically-relevant questions, which are often not the most scientifically relevant questions. Given the purpose it serves, political relevance is more important than scientific relevance.

2b. Election of Bureau, including Working Group chairs

The need for geographic and gender balance in selecting the bureau and WG Chairs is a problem. The WG Chairs from developing nations do not carry half the load – most are incapable of doing so. I can‘t comment on the performance of developing nation Bureau members as I have not been privy to Bureau meetings.

2c. Selection of lead authors

The problems caused by requiring geographic and gender balance are equally important at the lead author level. The developing nation participants on my Chapter team had limited understanding of developments outside their region and limited resources to obtain better understanding.

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p.57     2b. Election of Bureau, including Working Group chairs.  

The selection should be made considering science background and less in geographical balance. Of course there should be a balance representation of regions, fields and gender. I believe that some of these members can be elected even though they were not appointed by their governments.

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p.60     2c. Selection of lead authors

This is a horrendously difficult process and I think it is remarkable that it has worked as well as it has. The challenge of producing a Lead Author team that can work effectively together, has the right balance of expertise, a high degree of geographic and gender balance, along with a balance of scientific views is an impossible one. I cannot think of a better way of doing this.

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p.78     2c. Selection of lead authors

The observations I have made regarding the selection of scoping meeting are also relevant here and therefore I am not repeating the same. Since I have been selected for several IPCC reports, I have no personal prejudice (or grouse) on the process. However, regarding the selection of Lead Authors, I am more worried since the distortions, opaqueness and arbitrariness that is lately creeping into the process seems alarming. It seems that knowledge and scientific contributions are increasingly at discount in selection of authors compared to the personal connections, affiliations and political accommodations. This trend needs to be reversed if the excellence of IPCC as a Nobel Peace Prize winning organization is to be restored. 

The committee should look into the AR5 selections and ensure that these are done based on CV value, with some minor adjustments to accommodate regional and gender representations. Wherever it would appear that the scientific excellence is being compromised, the committee may make suggestions to include more authors, if needed, to ensure scientific excellence of IPCC reports which are increasingly used for scientific and policy community. 

A waiting list of lead authors should be maintained so as to ensure that the next level of selection, in case some lead authors refuse to become lead authors, the positions are not filled-in surreptitiously, but by a transparent formal process.

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p.93     2c. Selection of lead authors

Authors are selected by the respective working group, approved and endorsed by the Bureau. It always depends on scientific expertise and excellence and other factors such as geographic balance, range of views and gender. In AR5 more consideration is given to new authors and young scientists. CLA selection depends, beside the above criteria, on the ability to work in a team, the leadership experience and skills.

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p.121     2c. Selection of lead authors

The nomination and selection process is broadly sound but I believe that the ―principles applying to the selection process could be tightened up and defined as ―criteria. Given the complexity, judgment will always be required in the selection and formally scoring nominees and weighting the criteria will not be possible. However, there needs to be some guidance that no one ―principle‖ (scientific record, geographical spread etc) is dominant.

Currently, the Bureau may augment the government and other nominations for lead authors by adding names directly. In the AR5 selection for one WG, the Bureau additions were considerably less diverse – in terms of country, gender - than the original nomination list. The risk is that the lead author teams become too homogenous and do not reflect a sufficiently wide range of perspectives. Guidance on additions made by the Bureau would be helpful.

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p146     2c. Selection of lead authors

Strengths: Author teams are formed with balanced representation from developed and developing countries, gender, etc.

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p.160     2c. Selection of lead authors

Generally, LAs are nominated by governments and international organizations. However, how the selection is made from those lists is by far not clear. I am not aware that any process is in place. The predominant concern appears to be geographic, gender ... balance rather than making sure that the best LAs are chosen - this is particularly critical for the function of CLAs.

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p.170     2c. Selection of lead authors

Response: I think this is fair and objective but can be improved. There is a potential problem as this depends a lot on the nomination by focal points. I notice focal points from developing countries did not play their role actively in nominating the right scientists. For this AR5, a large country for the Southeast Asia region did not nominate their scientists to the IPCC. I found that within the working group (WG1) the selection is objective i.e. based on the publication track records as well as considering other factors such as gender and regional balance.

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p193     2c. Selection of lead authors

There is some governmental pressure to have an equilibrated distribution of genders and nationalities, which is not always fruitful.

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p.200     2c. Selection of lead authors

The process used by WG1 to select AR5 authors was exhaustive. It involved detailed bibliometric research on each of the close to 1000 nominations, followed by careful assessments of the fit between the expertise of nominees and the need for expertise in each chapter. Other considerations included regional and gender balance, as well as the balance between previous experience and the desire to involve younger scientists new to the process.

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p.206     2c. Selection of lead authors

Candidates are nominated by governments and organizations; with further contributions from members of the IPCC Bureau. The main criteria for selecting authors for IPCC Reports and experts for other IPCC activities are scientific expertise and excellence, as well as ensuring a proper geographical balance and a range of views. 

Recently, other factors such as gender balance and inclusion of new and younger experts have been taken into consideration. The ability to work in teams and a workable size of author teams are also important aspects in the selection process.

At the earliest opportunity the Secretariat should inform all governments and participating organizations the composition of the author teams for the different chapters. Nominated experts not selected to be Coordinating Lead Authors (CLA), Lead Authors (LA), or Review Editors (RE) are invited to become expert reviewers. Later, during the assessment process, the CLA and LA may enlist other experts as Contributing Authors (CA) to assist with the work.

Strengths:
 Joint effort to properly combine scientific excellence, geographical balance and the diversity of views within the author teams.

Weaknesses:
 Relatively few nominations from certain key geographical areas, mainly developing countries.

Recommendations for improvement:

1. Increasing the participation of experts from the developing countries has been a priority for
   the IPCC work. This should be a permanent goal for the IPCC activities in the future. 
2. More involvement of IPCC Bureau Members in encouraging nominations by the IPCC Focal
   Points (FPs) in their respective regions. 

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p.214     2. What are your views on the strengths and weaknesses of the following steps in the IPCC assessment process? Do you have any recommendations for improvement?

General: As any other activity, there are some positive points and some negative. In fact these procedures are very huge and hard. When man looked at these procedures from the out, he suppose , they may be much better from now. But operationally, when IPCC face with many different levels in all things including knowledge of experts from developing and developed countries, , views , references, level of researches , level of requests and necessities,... management of these are frankly very very hard.

Initially, I have worked with WMO and I entered to IPCC procedure at 2003. I have attend in many sessions of IPCC, including IPCC session, Bureau meeting, scientific workshop,... . I have found that the most subject for solving the problems and improving report and also activities for example geographical balance , gender balance , experience balance in the IPCC procedure and many substantial criteria in selecting lead author or using of regional information and using of grey literature have been discussed. And many approaches have presented, but in practical, it is not possible. For example for selecting lead author, when a region introduce only a few expert (non-professional) or anyone in a topic! What does IPCC do?

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p.288     2b. Election of Bureau, including Working Group chairs

The role of gender and geographic factors in bureau members election should be suppressed. Scientific quality and background should be the only criterion.

2c. Selection of lead authors
The role of gender and geographic factors in selecting authors/lead authors/review editors should be suppressed. Scientific quality and background should be the main criterion (with exception of clearly regional chapters where the regional factor should remain important) 

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p.291     2c. Selection of lead authors

This is again a very delicate issue, involving proper representation of the highest quality experts while at the same time a mix of subject expertise and perspective, gender, regional representation, specialist vs synthetic abilities, private vs public sector, and experience all need to be balanced. 

I think the present system works pretty well. 

I also believe that it is important for some flexibility to be kept in the system, for example to allow substitute authors to be recruited if authors withdraw, to allow new topic gaps to be plugged if they are identified, and to allow some mobility of authors between chapters during the writing process, if their contributions and areas of expertise are shown to provide a better fit to another chapter. Any changes from the original Lead Author list should still be subject to Bureau approval following a recommendation from the Co-Chairs

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p.298     2b. Election of Bureau, including Working Group chairs

Strengths: Some geographical balance achieved

Weaknesses: Difficulty to respond satisfactorily to the challenge of balance: scientific capacities and other criteria (regional and gender)

Recommendations: Improve the rules for the elections, including at the regional level

2c. Selection of lead authors
Strengths: Some geographical balance achieved

Weaknesses: Difficulty to respond satisfactorily to the challenge of balance scientific capacities and other criteria (regional and gender); opacity of the process conducted in the TSU and almost no discussion on the choices made by the TSUs is possible in the Bureau meetings

Recommendations: Establish clear rules for the choice of these experts, ensuring transparency of the process; let the plenary decide on the choice of the experts and not the Bureau 

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p.298     2c. Selection of lead authors

Strengths: Some geographical balance achieved

Weaknesses: Difficulty to respond satisfactorily to the challenge of balance scientific capacities and other criteria (regional and gender); opacity of the process conducted in the TSU and almost no discussion on the choices made by the TSUs is possible in the Bureau meetings

Recommendations: Establish clear rules for the choice of these experts, ensuring transparency of the process; let the plenary decide on the choice of the experts and not the Bureau

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p.316     2a. Scoping and identification of policy questions strengths

1. Selection of experts for scoping process based on scientific excellence and balanced scientific domain, geographical and gender representations is better coping with a holistic approach needed when dealing with climate issues. Also, the balance between the number of former participants and newcomers in the process is a sound procedure to maintain the robustness of it and to enable its openness and flexibility to new directions.


2. Every time an IPCC process is initiated for a new report a new ―architecture‖ is proposed by the new team; this happens without opening unnecessary gaps to keep apart the present and previous report approaches; so, there is a balance between what has been accomplished and

IPCC process.
3. The scoping process as it is now usually succeeds to deliver a global architecture of the report solid enough to support an original approach, at the same time providing sufficient room to comprehensively populate the designed architecture with required knowledge in the assessment process.

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p.318     2c. Selection of lead authors

strengths
I think that the selection of lead authors based on scientific excellence and balanced representation of scientific domains, geographical locations and gender is strength of the IPCC process. 

Firstly, it is coping with the multidimensional approach of the climate change issues. 

Secondly, this selection addresses the importance of knowledge projections to regional and local scales to reach local communities. 

Also, it improves knowledge transfer among scientists which is important for both scientific community and general public.

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p.317     People working in the IPCC process tend to become dissemination centers of updated climate change information for local media and general public, so having a global coverage of lead-authors will also make easier the knowledge transfer worldwide, beyond social, economic and gender barriers. Also, the balance between the number of former participants and newcomers in the process is a sound procedure to maintain the robustness of it and to enable its openness and flexibility to new directions. 

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p.327     2c. Selection of lead authors

The scientific excellence along with a correct balance between geographical and gender issues need to be the main elements to drive the selection of Lead Authors. Again the WG1 Lead Authors need to be assessed also by using the h-index. It is recommended to have the secretariat making public on the web-site the h-index of all LA selected for the WG1 reports.

It is suggested to increase the fully transparency of the process of selection of Lead Authors and this process should be under the responsibility only of the WG‘s Bureau and not of the IPCC Chair and IPCC Vice-Chairs. Also the procedures of selections should be very similar and consistent among the different WGs.

Finally, the same scientists should be kept in any role (CLA, LA or RE) only for two subsequent IPCC Assessment reports

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p.377     2c. Selection of lead authors

System seems fair overall. While local biases cannot be excluded, they probably neutralize overall. Selecting for competence is key, but regional or gender issues need to be considered.

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p.558     2c. Selection of lead authors

Authors are selected by the respective WG Bureau on the basis of proposals by the nations. In this selection process the national and gender balances play an important role. This may not be optimal under all circumstances, but I think this is still the best way to determine the team of authors.

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p.593     2b. Election of Bureau, including Working Group chairs

Recommendation: more gender balance be tried.

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p.598     2c. Selection of lead authors

Strengths: IPCC tries to reach a geographical balance as well as a gender balance. Focal Points have the opportunities to nominate the best authors. 

Weaknesses:  Sometimes nominations are very scarce for some regions

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p.601     4. Given the intergovernmental nature of IPCC, what are your views on the role of governments in the entire process?

One of the roles of the governments is to give guidance to the assessment process, without interfering in the science itself by

1.   identifying themes, items , policy questions 
2.   setting priorities and identifying calendars 
3.   developing rules and procedures 
4.   oversee the balance of the report (issues, geographical balance, balance in authors (expertise,
   geographical and gender balance) 
5.   guide and also control (in a way) the IPCC secretariat to see it is functioning well and the budget is spent well and in agreement with the decisions of the plenary....