Although there is no conclusive evidence, there have been at least speculations in the past about the impact that the gender of editors, reviewers and authors might have on the fairness of decisions made for the publication of manuscripts submitted to scholarly journals. As a result, tens of studies in the past have looked at gender parity (the notion of 50:50 representation) and equity (the notion of proportional representation compared to the broader population) of journal editorial positions. To mention a few more recent ones, studies in urology (1), general surgery (2), psychology (3), endocrinology (4), neurology (5), library science (6), and mathematics (7) all point to under-representation of women in various journal editorial positions.
We know from our study of journal publishing in Australia (8) that we publish more than 650 journals. Recently, to survey editors of Australian journals in order to study the roles, challenges and editorial processes of journals, I had to check the journals’ websites to identify the editors and their email addresses. As part of that, out of curiosity, I also recorded their gender (based on their picture, first name, or the pronouns used on their profiles).
I was able to find editors’ names for 516 journals. Out of these, 373 had single editors and 143 had joint editors. From single editor journals, 147 were female and 226 were male. Of journals with joint editors, 98 included a female editor, and 45 did not include any female.
When looking at the indexation of the journals in citation databases, both in Web of Science (its main 3 indexes, SSCI, SCI, AHCI) and Scopus, men were more likely to be the editors of indexed journals. The table below shows the data for Scopus (X2 = 7.2, df = 1, p = 0.007). While for female editors they were distributed about 50-50 for indexed and not-indexed journals, in the case of male editors, 64% of them were editors of indexed journals.
| Not indexed | Scopus-indexed | Total | |
| Female | 74 (50%) | 73 (50%) | 147 |
| Male | 82 (36%) | 144 (64%) | 226 |
| Total | 156 (42%) | 217 (58%) | 373 |
This data, although accurate, is not based on a robust study of gender in Australian journals’ editorial roles. However, the data is accurate and indicative of the overall situation and it shows disparity in gender representation among Australian journal editors. The trend is similar to what other studies have shown. There are of course disciplinary differences and some of these trends reflect the broader gender distribution in academic positions, which has improved over the years but still has room for improvement.
References
- Burg, M. L., Sholklapper, T., Kohli, P., Kaneko, M., Autran, A. M., Teoh, J., … & Cacciamani, G. E. (2022). Gender disparities among editorial boards of international urology journals. European Urology Focus, 8(6), 1840-1846.
- Gallivan, E., Arshad, S., Skinner, H., Burke, J. R., & Young, A. L. (2021). Gender representation in editorial boards of international general surgery journals. BJS open, 5(2), zraa064.
- Lin, Z., & Li, N. (2023). Contextualizing gender disparity in editorship in psychological science. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 18(4), 887-907.
- Mantovani, A., Rinaldi, E., & Zusi, C. (2020). Gender disparity in editorial boards of scientific journals in endocrinology. Journal of Endocrinological Investigation, 43, 549-550.
- Mariotto, S., Beatrice, G., Carta, S., Bozzetti, S., & Mantovani, A. (2020). Gender disparity in editorial boards of journals in neurology. Neurology, 95(11), 489-491.
- Parabhoi, L., Verma, M. K., & Dewey, R. S. (2024). Gender representation on the editorial boards of Library and Information Science journals. Global Knowledge, Memory and Communication, 73(6/7), 792-808.
- Topaz, C. M., & Sen, S. (2016). Gender representation on journal editorial boards in the mathematical sciences. PLoS ONE, 11(8), e0161357.
- Jamali, H. R., Wakeling, S., & Abbasi, A. (2022). Scholarly journal publishing in Australia. Learned Publishing, 35(2), 198-208.
