Report Reveals Only One-Third of Chief Editors at Top-Ranking Scientific Journals Are Women

A new article published in Nature has revealed a stark gender gap among chief editors of top-ranking scientific academic journals.

The authors of the study examined 200 of the highest-ranked journals in the SCImago Journal and Country Rank, a database of more than 34,000 academic journals, and reviewed the 174 journals that had one chief editor. The authors estimated the gender of each journal’s chief editor by their names and publicly available images. They discovered that only 36 percent of chief editors were women. This was the case for both medical and non-medical journals.

The report also revealed a preference for United States and United Kingdom-based editors, who represented 88 percent of all chief editors studied. The same pattern was found among women chief editors, 80 percent of whom were from the U.S. or the U.K.

The authors stress that in order to achieve gender equity in academia, promoting and recognizing talented women scholars in prestigious positions should be a top priority.