Women are underrepresented on editorial boards

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1 Agronomy Department, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, USA
2 School of Forest Resources and Conservation, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, USA
3 School of Natural Resources and Environment, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, USA
4 Biology Department, University of Florida, Gainesville, USA
5 Department of Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, USA
6 Center for Latin American Studies, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, USA
DOI
10.7287/peerj.preprints.369v1
Published
Accepted
Subject Areas
Science Policy
Keywords
Gender, Editorial Boards, Bias, Associate Editors, Subject Editors, Editor-in-Chief
Copyright
© 2014 Cho et al.
Licence
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ PrePrints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
Cite this article
Cho A, Johnson SA, Schuman C, Adler J, Gonzalez O, Graves SJ, Huebner J, Marchant DB, Rifai S, Skinner I, Bruna EM. 2014. Women are underrepresented on editorial boards. PeerJ PrePrints 2:e369v1

Abstract

Despite women earning similar numbers of graduate degrees as men in STEM disciplines, they are underrepresented in upper level positions in both academia and industry. Editorial board memberships are an important example of such positions; membership is both a professional honor in recognition of achievement and an opportunity for professional advancement. We surveyed 10 highly regarded journals in environmental biology, natural resource management, and plant sciences to quantify the number of women on their editorial boards and in positions of editorial leadership from 1985-2013. We found that during this time period, only 16% of editorial board members were women, with more pronounced disparities in positions of editorial leadership (i.e., Associate Editors, Editors-in-Chief). Although the trend was towards improvement over time, there was surprising variation between journals. We argue editorial boards should strive for gender parity to increase the number of women afforded the opportunities and benefits that accompany membership, as well as increase the number of role models and mentors for early-career scientists and students.

Author Comment

This pre-print is being submitted for consideration to another journal.