Introduction: The Planetary Science Wiki Edit-a-thon is a science outreach project with the goal to highlight diversity within the international planetary science community. It promotes the creation of Wikipedia articles about women planetary scientists, and other under-represented groups with the final aim to reduce the gender bias in Wikipedia. In collaboration with Wikimedia Belgium, we offered a Wikipedia course between February and March 2025 to teach participants how to create and edit biographies of women scientists. This was followed by a Wiki edit-a-thon, which will conclude during EPSC-DPS2025.

Background:  Wikipedia is an open source, web-based encyclopedia, allowing anonymous and registered users to create, edit and improve articles. A survey in 2018 showed that as many as 90% of Wikipedia's editors were male and as many as 81% of contributors were from the Global North [1]. 

In addition, there are fewer contributions about women, especially in STEM fields, and they are usually less developed [2]. In October 2014, only 15.53% of English Wikipedia's biographies were about women [3]. The WikiProject Women in Red was founded in July 2015 with the objective to address this gender bias in Wikipedia content. They succeeded in increasing the above-mentioned percentage to 19.994% as of 2 December 2024 [2].

Today, Wikipedia is within the 20 most popular websites [4] and every month it attracts more than 1 billion unique visitors [5]. Wikipedia therefore has a huge potential to change publics perception of who is doing science and what a scientist ‘looks’ like.

(Women) planetary scientists on Wikipedia?  In June 2020, there were only 189 planetary scientist biographies on the English Wikipedia, including 48 biographies of female planetary scientists. This percentage is in agreement with the percentage of women in the International Astronomical Union from all ESA’s Member States (24%) [6], but planetary scientists are clearly underrepresented on Wikipedia. Many of them either do not have a Wikipedia biography yet, or if they do, they are often misclassified under the category of “astronomers” or “astrophysicists”.

A Planetary Science Wiki Edit-a-thon: This gap inspired the Diversity Committee of the Europlanet Society to organise in collaboration with Women in Red, WikiDonne, WikiMujeres and Wikimedia Belgium, the first Planetary Science Wiki Edit-a-thon during the Congress 2020, held completely by volunteers. After our first edition, we still organised regular meetings as volunteers, but we missed a professional training. The Fond E. Solvay is giving us the possibility to bring our project to the next level by hiring a Wikipedia Trainer.

The 2025 Edition of the Planetary Science Wiki Edit-a-thon: in collaboration with Wikimedia Belgium, we offered a hybrid Wikipedia training course designed to teach participants how to create and edit biographies. The sessions were held online in February and March 2025, with follow-up collaborative meetings from April to July to support continued engagement. Participants of all experience levels were guided through identifying notable scientists, collecting reliable sources, writing and translating articles, and contributing to the global accessibility of planetary science history. These regular sessions created a supportive environment for knowledge sharing, and motivation.

The project will culminate during EPSC-DPS 2025 in Helsinki, showcasing the biographies created and the broader impact of the initiative. By empowering scientists and science enthusiasts to actively shape content on Wikipedia, this project works toward reducing gender bias and promoting a more inclusive representation of the planetary science community — one article at a time.

Acknowledgements: Project carried out with the support of the Ernest Solvay Fund, managed by the King Baudouin Foundation (Grant agreement 2024-F1120700-0022766).

References:

[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Insights/2018_Report

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Women_in_Red  

[3] Eduardo Graells-Garrido, Mounia Lalmas, Filippo Menczer, "First Women, Second Sex: Gender Bias in Wikipedia", arXiv, 9 February 2015, p. 3.

[4] "Wikipedia.org Traffic, Demographics and Competitors". www.alexa.com. Retrieved October 1, 2019.

[5] https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/all-wikipedia-projects

[6] Piccialli A., et al., Participation of women scientists in ESA Solar System missions: a historical trend, Adv. Geosci., 53, 169–182, https://doi.org/10.5194/adgeo-53-169-2020, 2020.

[7] https://www.europlanet-society.org/epsc-2020-planetary-science-wiki-edit-a-thon/  

How to cite: Piccialli, A., Motte dit Falisse, A., Van Pamel, G., Heward, A., and Vandaele, A. C.: The 2025 Edition of the Planetary Science Wiki Edit-a-thon, EPSC-DPS Joint Meeting 2025, Helsinki, Finland, 7–13 Sep 2025, EPSC-DPS2025-103, https://doi.org/10.5194/epsc-dps2025-103, 2025.

We will present the demographics of scientists in ESA (European Space Agency) Science Programme’s missions and discuss how this trend changed over time.

A study by [1] analyzed the participation of women scientists in 10 ESA Solar System missions over a period of 38 years. Being part of a spacecraft mission science team can be considered a proxy to measure the "success" in the field. Participation of women in PI (Principal Investigators) teams varied between 4 % and 25 %, with several missions having no women in the PI teams. The percentage of female scientists as Co-I (Co-Investigators) was always less than 16 %. This number is lower than the percentage of women in the International Astronomical Union from all ESA's Member State (24 %), which can give us an indication of the percentage of women in the field.

More recently, [2] and [3] investigated the demographics for PI and Co-PI (where appropriate) for a total of 28 ESA missions. They collected information regarding the institution, location, “academic age” (years since PhD) and gender.

In this work, we wish to go one step further, and analyze the demographics of Co-I for the whole ESA Science Programme’s fleet.

Some difficulties we are encountering are: 1) to find the original team members, as often new members are added over time, 2) determining the institution and the “academic age” at the time when the mission was selected, and 3) identifying the gender, if no self-declarations are available. For this study, we did not consider gender identities outside the male/female binary.

Detailed statistics represent only the first step to highlight possible bias and gaps that may affect the achievement of an equal and inclusive scientific environment.

References

[1] Piccialli, A., et al.: Participation of women scientists in ESA solar system missions: a historical trend, Adv. Geosci., 53, 169–182, https://doi.org/10.5194/adgeo-53-169-2020, 2020.

[2] Parmar, A., et al., Was that … good?, Astronomy & Geophysics, Volume 65, Issue 4, August 2024, Pages 4.30–4.35, https://doi.org/10.1093/astrogeo/atae048

[3] Zarnecki, J., Parmar, A. (2025). Payload Provision to the ESA Science Programme. In: Parmar, A. (eds) ESA Science Programme Missions. ISSI Scientific Report Series, vol 18. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-69004-4_3

How to cite: Piccialli, A., Parmar, A., and Zarnecki, J.: Demographics of ESA’s Science Programme’s missions, EPSC-DPS Joint Meeting 2025, Helsinki, Finland, 7–13 Sep 2025, EPSC-DPS2025-2061, https://doi.org/10.5194/epsc-dps2025-2061, 2025.

Europlanet is a non-profit association that promotes the advancement of European planetary science and related fields, for the benefit of the community, and is open to individual and organisational members. We are dedicated to creating a diverse and inclusive network that supports planetary science and related fields across Europe and globally. This is the main task of the Eruoplanet Diversity Committee (1, 2).

Our main aims are to promote equality, diversity and inclusivity in planetary science and related fields, with a particular focus on our annual meeting, the Europlanet Science Congress (EPSC), and workshops organised through Europlanet and its membership. The Committee members are the diversity officers from all the Europlanet Regional Hubs, in addition to representatives from the Europlanet Early Careers (EPEC) network and the Europlanet Executive Board. This structure enables close links between the Diversity Committee, the Hubs and other Europlanet structures, and ensures that diversity is embedded within all activities of the Europlanet Society. The Europlanet Diversity Committee also coordinates efforts with partner societies globally. We are working with the Professional Culture and Climate Subcommittee of the DPS on diversity efforts for our joint EPSC-DPS 2025 meeting.

The Europlanet Diversity Committee supports efforts to foster engagement and collaboration with individuals and institutions from groups and countries that are under-represented in planetary science and to increase awareness of challenges faced within the community. In recent years, mentoring, expert exchanges, training, discounted fees and targeted meetings have all been offered to support diversity and inclusion. We have run annual wiki-edit-a-thons since 2020 to highlight the valuable contributions of women and under-represented groups within the international planetary science community. Since 2011, we have tracked trends in participation by under-represented countries in EPSC to try to better understand the current situation and identify barriers to participation, and craft effective responses to reduce them. We have also offered sessions, round-tables and short courses at EPSC and other Europlanet meetings to support the sharing of best practice and training in areas such as bystander intervention, mental health and wellbeing. In 2025, we plan to run a ‘pulse survey’ to gauge and enhance our members’ engagement, wellbeing, inclusion, and work culture.

The Europlanet Science Congress (EPSC) is the annual meeting place of the Europlanet Society and is largest planetary science meeting in Europe. It covers the entire range of planetary sciences with an extensive mix of talks, workshops and poster sessions while providing a unique space for networking and exchange of experiences. For an event with this dimension and importance, it is crucial to think, discuss and improve the diversity, inclusiveness, and accessibility plan of EPSC to enable as wide an access as possible for the entire planetary science community worldwide. This is one of the main tasks of the Europlanet Diversity Committee.

The target groups that have been addressed by the Europlanet Diversity Committee are mainly: women, early career participants, researchers from the under-represented European countries, non- EU participants, colleagues with disabilities, people of color, other minorities, and allies. Each year, the Committee organizes various opportunities during EPSC to open a dialogue with the community, to collect their needs and to address solutions.

Measures implemented through the activities of Diversity Committee in the venue selection and operation of EPSC include: provision of food suitable for those with various dietary requirements, access to gender neutral washroom facilities, a raising of awareness for conveners regarding implicit bias and the importance of having diverse panel members, and generally normalizing the promotion and discussion of diversity in STEM at academic meetings, offering childcare, to parents with young children, in close collaboration with the Local Organizing Committee (LOC). The provision of a ‘Silent Room’ is now a tradition at EPSC, enabling participants to find refuge from the crowded conference, and offering a private and comfortable space for nursing mothers, prayers, or any other needs requiring isolation for a short time. Accessibility to the venue is always closely reviewed by the LOC and the Diversity Committee. Offering the congress in hybrid mode is another way of ensuring accessibility for those who can’t travel to attend the congress.

Exchange with the community and collecting feedback from the individuals are vital to a committee trying to ensure a diverse and inclusive atmosphere. In order to achieve this, we organize an annual Diversity Roundtable, Diversity sessions in the scientific programme, a diversity keynote talk during the ice-breaker on Sunday prior to EPSC, and various types of workshops and training. Feedback from all EPSC participants is also solicited through a form that asks respondents to share their thoughts and comments on what they liked and didn’t like about the meeting, and suggestions for change at future meetings. The summary of these findings are discussed by the EPSC and Diversity Committees to ensure that lessons are learned and the meeting adapts to the needs of the community.

The Diversity Committee of the Europlanet Society aims to highlight diversity within the planetary science community and to reduce the gender gap on Wikipedia. Therefore, we have been organizing, in collaboration with Women in Red and WikiDonne, since EPSC 2020, the Planetary Science Wiki Edit- a-thon. An Edit-a-thon (‘edit marathon’) is an organized event where editors from an online community (such as Wikipedia in this case) write, translate and improve articles on a specific topic. During EPSC, we provide basic training to start editing/writing Wikipedia articles. We also meet regularly throughout the year to continue to add and translate articles of women biographies and other under-represented communities in planetary science.

References: (1) Adeli et al., EPSC 2024 – (2) Heward et al., EAS 2025

How to cite: Adeli, S., Piccialli, A., Heward, A., Vandaele, A. C., Molla, M., Ivanovski, S., Jäggi, N., parro, L. M., Roberts, J. H., and karagoz, O.: Advancing Diversity and Inclusion within Europlanet, EPSC-DPS Joint Meeting 2025, Helsinki, Finland, 7–13 Sep 2025, EPSC-DPS2025-2057, https://doi.org/10.5194/epsc-dps2025-2057, 2025.

The 2020 Demographic Survey of the Division of Planetary Science of the American Astronomical Society¹ shows that women are 32% of their membership. In terms of ethnic diversity, 10% were Asian or Asian American and 8 % were all other ethnicities. These percentages are slightly different from the broader workforce survey which includes non-members: 37% women, 13% Asian or Asian American and 11% all other ethnicities with 6% of these declaring more than one ethnicity. For the USA, the percentage of women and all other ethnicities are below the national values. The International Astronomical Union has 2843 members as part of their Division F Planetary Systems and Astrobiology, their membership is drawn from all over the world². Doing a quick estimate of Division F members, I found 17% women, which if it is a good estimate is below the IAU average of 21% women³.  The effort to increase the diversity in STEM has been ongoing and for some cases for over 40 years without success. Many of the social sciences and some of the natural sciences were able to reach gender parity (see Figure 1 for the United Kingdom), but the fields of planetary science and astrophysics have failed in spite of their repeated efforts (last two columns for Figure 1). In this presentation, I will consider several factors that might aid in positively changing these demographics. Unconsidered factors that may be hindering diversification could be definitions Indigeneity and the migration of scientists. Depending upon the country, scientists may not originate from the town or region, the country or even the continent where they are employed. For example, at the University of Edinburgh, the astrophysicists and astrobiologists are comprised of academic migrants with only a handful of scientists from Scotland and none from Edinburgh. Most departments are in agreement about increasing diversity when it applies to women, but may have conflicting ideas about and resistance to increasing specific types of ethnic/racial diversity. This might be due to migrant and local scientists holding different ideas about Indigeneity, that is different ideas of who are considered Indigenous and who are the local target populations. It is possible to quantify resistance to change by using field tested surveys designed to measure resistance to change and the level of happiness/contentment with the status quo. When conducting a survey, it cannot be too long and it has to be appropriate for your population of study. I will discuss three surveys that I think are appropriate to use.  When strategizing on which actions to take to increase diversity, it is important to know what has been done in the past and if it was successful or not. This seems like a basic idea, but such previous department knowledge may have been lost as scientists circulate through and retire. Summarizing, I will discuss Indigeneity, the migration of scientists, noting previous efforts and potential surveys, with the goal of aiding in positively changing the demographics of planetary scientists and related STEM disciplines.

Figure 1: United Kingdom Higher Education Statistics by Subject⁴ Academic Year 2023/2024

• Porter, A. M., Susan White, & Julius Dollison. 2020 Survey of the Planetary Science Workforce. 26 https://dps.aas.org/wp-content/uploads/files/reports/2020/Results_from_the_2020_Survey_of_the_Planetary_Science_Workforce.pdf (2020).
• IAU Division F: Structure. https://www.iau.org/DivisionF/DivisionF/Structure.aspx?code=F.
• Hasan, P. et al. THE IAU-WOMEN IN ASTRONOMY WORKING GROUP AND INCLUSIVITY. 2nd Workshop Astron. Common Senses Access. Incl. Rev. Mex. Astron. Astrofís. Ser. Conf. 54, 129–132 (2022).
• the Higher Education Statistics Agency,. What areas do they work in? HESA. https://www.hesa.ac.uk/data-and-analysis/staff/areas.

How to cite: Holbrook, J.: Thoughts on Changing Our Demographics, EPSC-DPS Joint Meeting 2025, Helsinki, Finland, 7–13 Sep 2025, EPSC-DPS2025-28, https://doi.org/10.5194/epsc-dps2025-28, 2025.

In recent months, institutional efforts to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion in the United States have faced severe challenges. A series of executive orders [1,2] containing inflammatory, misleading, and outright false language have been issued, instructing government agencies to terminate “all discriminatory programs including illegal DEI and ‘diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility” (DEIA) mandates, policies, programs, preferences, and activities in the Federal Government under whatever name they appear. Here, we discuss the immediate and anticipated impacts on planetary science in the US.

            Despite the language of [1], DEIA is not inherently discriminatory, illegal, or wasteful. DEIA does not involve preferential hiring of unqualified persons simply because of identities; rather, DEIA is a tool to mitigate discrimination on the basis of identity or disability that is currently occurring, and to prevent future discrimination. DEI promotes the fair treatment and full participation of all people. It improves and advances science by broadening participation and prevents individuals from being excluded because of their identity. Moreover, DEIA has been shown to produce better scientific results in less time while using fewer resources. In short, DEIA initiatives serve the very goals stated in [1].

            Nevertheless, there have been very tangible effects of the termination of DEIA work on the planetary science community. In January, the various Analysis and Assessment Groups (AGs) were directed to stand down. A planned meeting of the Mercury Exploration AG was canceled just days before it was to begin, and several other AG meetings have since been canceled or postponed. The AGs are the primary vehicle for collecting community input and sharing scientific priorities with NASA. While the AGs have recently been permitted to restart meetings and operations, the Planetary Advisory Committee, the mechanism by which the AGs report to NASA, has been shut down.

            Additional restrictions on NASA have hampered DEI work in planetary sciences. A multi-year effort to standardize the implementation of inclusion plans in mission proposals has been terminated. The program supporting Topical Workshops, Symposia, and Conferences (TWSC) has been eliminated, and workshops that had already been approved and funded under this program have been canceled, including workshops on EDIA for leaders in planetary science [3] and Culturally Inclusive Planetary Engagement [4]. The Here-to-Observe (H2O) program, which embeds undergraduate students as observers on mission teams has also been terminated.

            More broadly, existing research grants are being reviewed for DEIA activities and holders of those grants are instructed to discontinue those efforts, and there are threats that the grants may be terminated altogether. These orders have also caused massive disruption to the grant application process. The annual solicitation for Research Opportunities for Space and Earth Sciences (ROSES) is normally released in February. However, this years’ solicitation was withheld, ostensibly in order to revise the language in the program for consistency with the orders on DEI. As of the time of submission of this abstract, ROSES is nearly three months overdue, and is a source of considerable stress for US researchers. ROSES grants are the foundation of planetary research. Researchers at “soft-money” institutions may be wholly dependent on grant funding. Academics depend on grant funding to support students and for their own summer salary. Some PhD programs in planetary science are recruiting and admitting graduate students at far lower than baseline levels because of uncertain funding.

            Because scientific institutions are dependent on federal contracts and grants for the bulk of their research funding, compliance with these executive orders has cascaded into non-governmental institutions as well. Recipients of federal funds have been directed to certify that they are not conducting DEIA work [2]. Although the legality of such orders is dubious, the fear of such funding loss has led many organizations to cease their own DEI activities. There has been censorship of official records. Abstracts and even entire sessions have been removed from the programs of meetings that have already occurred. This removal of presentations from the meeting records is an erasure of individuals’ work and identities, and constitutes a form of academic theft. The motivation is that such pre-emptive compliance will prevent the institutions from becoming targets. Historically, this tactic is generally unsuccessful, and simply leads to additional demands being placed on the potential recipient [5].

            The brunt of these impacts is being borne by the most vulnerable members of the community, and early career researchers struggle more than others [6]. In the absence of government support, grassroots efforts must take on the role of supporting the community. Open letters [e.g., 7] on the value of EDIA to Planetary Science have garnered thousands of signatures. Independent groups, such as the Choir Collaboration, have openly established mutual aid programs [8]; others are keeping their efforts underground. Some societies with strong advocacy networks, such as the American Astronomical Society and the American Geophysical Union, are making statements [9,10] and actively lobbying Congress to reverse harmful cuts and advocate. Finally, there are actions that individuals can take. Any resident can contact their legislators to support the science community. Any person can participate in DEI work on their own, even if not supported by an institutional effort. Anyone can act as an ally [11] and live the way we like. Even if NASA cannot read our inclusion plans, we can still write them and make sure that our own teams are just and equitable.

[1] Trump, DJ (2025), Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Preferencing, EO 14151
[2] Trump, DJ (2025), Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity, EO 14173
[3] Workshop for Leaders in Planetary Science, https://edialps.psi.edu/
[4] Shulpa, C. et al. (2025) Planetary REACH, https://www.lpi.usra.edu/planetary-reach/workshops/
[5] Kipling, R. (1911), Dane-geld, in Rudyard Kipling's Verse, Garden City, NY: Doubleday. pp. 716.
[6] Langin, K. (2025), Science, 387, doi: 10.1126/science.z2m2kue
[7] Rathbun, J. et al. (2025) The value of EDIA to Planetary Science: A letter from the PWIDE Community Alliance, https://sites.google.com/view/the-value-of-edia
[8] https://www.gofundme.com/f/mutual-aid-for-astronomy-and-space-sciences
[9] American Astronomical Society Public Policy, https://aas.org/advocacy/policy-blog
[10] American Geophysical Union From the Prow, https://fromtheprow.agu.org/
[11] Huang, H.-C. et al. (2025), Nature Human Behavior, 9, 426–428.

How to cite: Roberts, J. and the DPS Professional Culture and Climate Subcommittee: Impacts of Federal Actions on DEIA to Planetary Science, EPSC-DPS Joint Meeting 2025, Helsinki, Finland, 7–13 Sep 2025, EPSC-DPS2025-1002, https://doi.org/10.5194/epsc-dps2025-1002, 2025.