Scholars with the Institute for Advanced Social Studies at the University of Córdoba in Spain have published a new study that characterizes the organizational structure and distribution of positions among editorial boards at 15 major publishers. The review of more than 810,000 editorial roles across more than 10,000 journals includes key insights into women’s representation in scholarly publishing.
Among the analyzed roles, 55.7 percent were held by men and 27.6 percent were held by women. The authors could not confirm the gender of editors in the remaining 16.7 percent of positions. Thus, when excluding this unknown group, women represented just 33.2 percent of identified editors.
While all editorial boards in the authors’ analysis were majority male, the proportion of women in these roles varies by publisher. Women’s representation was lowest at Taylor & Francis (19.7 percent) and highest at ACS (36.8 percent) and Springer (36.7 percent). When restricting the analysis to identified editors only, women’s representation approaches over 40 percent at ACS, Cambridge University Press, and Springer, but remains below 32 percent at Elsevier, Frontiers, and PLOS.
“Gender disparities remain pronounced. Women occupy only one-third of all identified editorial positions, a rate that lags behind the global representation of women in the active research workforce,” the authors conclude. “Furthermore, leadership and executive roles exhibit greater male dominance, reflecting persistent structural barriers to gender equity in editorial governance. This persistent imbalance underscores the need for transparent monitoring and targeted interventions; future study should test whether gaps vary by role type, board size, discipline, and publisher policies.”