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Gender Representation on Journal Editorial Boards in the Mathematical Sciences

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  • Chad M Topaz
  • Shilad Sen

Abstract

We study gender representation on the editorial boards of 435 journals in the mathematical sciences. Women are known to comprise approximately 15% of tenure-stream faculty positions in doctoral-granting mathematical sciences departments in the United States. Compared to this group, we find that 8.9% of the 13067 editorships in our study are held by women. We describe group variations within the editorships by identifying specific journals, subfields, publishers, and countries that significantly exceed or fall short of this average. To enable our study, we develop a semi-automated method for inferring gender that has an estimated accuracy of 97.5%. Our findings provide the first measure of gender distribution on editorial boards in the mathematical sciences, offer insights that suggest future studies in the mathematical sciences, and introduce new methods that enable large-scale studies of gender distribution in other fields.

Suggested Citation

  • Chad M Topaz & Shilad Sen, 2016. "Gender Representation on Journal Editorial Boards in the Mathematical Sciences," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(8), pages 1-21, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0161357
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0161357
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Eric P. Bettinger & Bridget Terry Long, 2005. "Do Faculty Serve as Role Models? The Impact of Instructor Gender on Female Students," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(2), pages 152-157, May.
    2. Daniel Storage & Zachary Horne & Andrei Cimpian & Sarah-Jane Leslie, 2016. "The Frequency of “Brilliant” and “Genius” in Teaching Evaluations Predicts the Representation of Women and African Americans across Fields," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(3), pages 1-17, March.
    3. Elisabetta Addis & Paola Villa, 2003. "The Editorial Boards of Italian Economics Journals: Women, Gender, and Social Networking," Feminist Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 9(1), pages 75-91.
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    Cited by:

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    2. Cristina Rodríguez-Faneca & Alexander Maz-Machado & David Gutiérrez-Rubio & Cristina Pedrosa-Jesús, 2022. "Presence of women on the editorial boards of the language and linguistics journals in Spain," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(7), pages 4237-4249, July.
    3. Kwiek, Marek & Roszka, Wojciech, 2021. "Gender-based homophily in research: A large-scale study of man-woman collaboration," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 15(3).
    4. Francisco González Sala & Julia Osca Lluch & Francisco Tortosa Gil & María Peñaranda Ortega, 2017. "Characteristics of monographic special issues in Ibero-American psychology journals: visibility and relevance for authors and publishers," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 112(2), pages 1069-1077, August.
    5. Abra Brisbin & Ursula Whitcher, 2018. "Women’s Representation in Mathematics Subfields: Evidence from the arXiv," The Mathematical Intelligencer, Springer, vol. 40(1), pages 38-49, March.
    6. Chad M. Topaz & Jude Higdon & Avriel Epps-Darling & Ethan Siau & Harper Kerkhoff & Shivani Mendiratta & Eric Young, 2022. "Race- and gender-based under-representation of creative contributors: art, fashion, film, and music," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 9(1), pages 1-11, December.
    7. Mengyu Yu & Mazie Krehbiel & Samantha Thompson & Tatjana Miljkovic, 2020. "An exploration of gender gap using advanced data science tools: actuarial research community," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 123(2), pages 767-789, May.
    8. Luke Holman & Devi Stuart-Fox & Cindy E Hauser, 2018. "The gender gap in science: How long until women are equally represented?," PLOS Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(4), pages 1-20, April.
    9. Somayeh Mohammadi Hamidi & Mohammad Rezaei-Pandari & Sima Fakheran & Christine Fürst, 2022. "The Gender Gap in Land Sciences: A Review of Women’s Presence on the Editorial Boards of Peer-Reviewed Journals," Land, MDPI, vol. 11(11), pages 1-15, October.
    10. Fengyuan Liu & Petter Holme & Matteo Chiesa & Bedoor AlShebli & Talal Rahwan, 2023. "Gender inequality and self-publication are common among academic editors," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 7(3), pages 353-364, March.
    11. Ana Teresa Santos & Sandro Mendonça, 2022. "The small world of innovation studies: an “editormetrics” perspective," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(12), pages 7471-7486, December.
    12. Hofmeister, Sophie & Lindenau, Johannes & Mischau, Anina & Ransiek, Anna & Solga, Heike, 2021. "Erste Befunde aus dem Projekt "MATH+ as a Research Object": Karriereziele, -wissen und -handeln, Nachwuchsförderung und Rekrutierung," Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Skill Formation and Labor Markets SP I 2021-501, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
    13. Caroline Wagner, 2016. "Rosalind’s Ghost: Biology, Collaboration, and the Female," PLOS Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(11), pages 1-5, November.

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