Only 36% of chief editors at top-ranking journals are women

Just over a third of chief editors of top-rankingscientific journals are women, according to a letter to the journal Nature (Nature 2024, DOI: 10.1038/d41586-024-03121-x).

The letter writers used names and publicly available images to estimate the gender of the chief editors of the 200 most highly ranked journals in the SCImago Journal and Country Rank, a portal that contains data on more than 34,000 journals published by some 5,000 publishers.

Of those 200 titles, 174 had a single person in the position of chief editor, of which 62 (36%) were women, the study found. There was no significant difference between the percentage of female chief editors at medical and nonmedical journals.

The demographics of the editors also revealed a strong bias toward the US and UK: 82 editors (47%) were based in the US, and 71 (41%) were in the UK. Female chief editors showed a similar trend: 31% were in the US, and 49% in the UK.

Letter coauthor Mohammad Hossein Nowroozzadeh, an ophthalmologist at Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, says reaching gender parity in the chief editor role is an achievable goal and should be a priority in the scientific community.

“Ensuring gender equity in prestigious positions, including scientific leadership roles, is crucial, as it reflects broader societal fairness,” Nowroozzadeh writes in an email. “Talented women are as available as men, but longstanding social inequities have limited their rise to such roles. Addressing this is key for progress in both science and the development of an equitable society.”