Gender and geographical disparity in editorial boards of journals in psychology and neuroscience

Abstract

We reviewed publicly available information from the top 50 journals worldwide in psychology and neuroscience to infer the proportions of editors by gender and country of affiliation. In both fields, the proportions of male and female editors differed significantly, both across editorial roles and within various role categories. Moreover, for 76% of psychology journals and 88% of neuroscience journals more than 50% of editors were male, whereas only 20% and 10%, respectively, had a similar proportion of female editors. US-based academics outnumbered those from other countries as editors in both psychology and neuroscience beyond what would be expected from approximate rates of senior psychology and neuroscience scholars worldwide. Our findings suggest that editorial positions in academic journals—possibly one of the most powerful decision-making roles in academic psychology and neuroscience—are balanced in neither gender nor geographical representation.