Ninth International Conference on Communication & Media Studies

Abstract

Editors-in-chief and members of editorial boards of scientific journals play an extremely important role in the development of science and assure research integrity, as scientific publications are the major results of research. While gender parity in tenure-track hiring decisions and promotion rates has improved, female academics remain underrepresented in senior career phases, including editors-in-chief and members of editorial boards positions of scientific journals. Journal editors and members of editorial boards exert considerable power over what is published and in certain cases the direction of an academic discipline and the career advancement of authors. For this reason, it is important to minimize biases extrinsic to the merit of the work impacting publication decisions. One way to achieve this is to ensure a diverse pool of editors and members of editorial boards, ensuring the widest possible coverage of different competencies. Another possible option, a distributive model would seek an editorial board reflective of existing proportions in the field at large. This paper presents comprehensive results of Lithuanian scientific journals study. During the research process were reviewed publicly available information from all scientific journals published in Lithuania to infer the proportions of members of editorial boards by gender and country of affiliation. The results of the study reveal differences in the proportions of male and female members of editorial boards in different disciplines of science, as well as clear geographical disparity in Lithuanian scientific journals’ editorial boards.