Gender analysis of editorial boards and authorship in leading endodontics journals

To evaluate the presence of women on editorial boards and as authors in leading global endodontics journals from 2018 to 2023.

The selection of journals was based on the impact factor from Journal Citation Reports (JCR) and CiteScore 2022, with criteria of JCR above 1 and CiteScore above 1.5. Editorial board members were categorized as editor-in-chief and associate editor. Authorship was categorized into first, last, and corresponding author roles. The names of editorial board members and authors were extracted into an Excel spreadsheet, and gender analysis was conducted using the platforms Genderize, PubMed, Scopus, ResearchGate, and author's affiliated institutions' websites, categorized in a binary way. Descriptive statistics were used to analyse the data on the editorial board. A Poisson regression analysis was performed to investigate the prevalence ratio (PR) of female authorship compared with male authorship in the roles of first, last, and corresponding author. The Chi-square test was performed to evaluate the associations between female authors in prominent positions and the presence of other female authors.

A total of four journals were analysed, identifying 24 editors-in-chief and 233 associate editors. None of the editor-in-chief were women, and 23 (9.8%) of the associate editors were female. Amongst the 8965 authors identified, 2983 (33.2%) were female: 1288 (41.1%) were first authors, 827 (27.7%) were last authors and 928 (31.1%) were correspondence authors. The PR for female corresponding authors was higher in AEJ than in JOE (1.07 [CI 1.03-1.11]), whilst the PR for female first authors was lower in IEJ than in JOE (0.96 [CI 0.93-0.99]). There was a lower PR for women as first authors in 2018 (0.94 [CI 0.90-0.99]) and as first (0.94 [CI 0.90-0.98]) and last (0.94 [CI 0.90-0.98)] authors in 2019 compared with 2023. The presence of women in prominent authorship positions was associated with increased female authorship in other positions (p < .01).

Female participation on editorial boards and as prominent authors in leading journals is low, indicating significant challenges. Increasing female presence in prominent authorship roles may lead to greater female participation in other authorship positions.