Unraveling the Editorial Team Structure, Gender, and Country Representation in the LIS Journals

This study aims to analyse the editorial board structure, geographical representation, and gender gap among editorial team members in the library and information science (LIS) field. This study extracted editorial member data from 100 top-tier LIS journals published in English from the Scopus database. The findings of the study revealed that out of 2592 editorial teams, including editorial board members, 52.4 per cent were men and 47.6 per cent were women. The results obtained from the present study indicate a significant relationship between the journal’s country of origin and the dominance of domestic members in the editorial and advisory teams. It was revealed that there was a strong correlation between the continent of origin of a journal and the gender of editorial team members. Journals originating in Africa and Asia did not have proportionately good women representation in the editorial team compared to Europe and North America. It revealed that a significant gender disparity in editorial positions: chief editor/editor, associate editor, and editorial board member. Furthermore, it was found that the woman editor-in-chief positively correlated with a higher proportion of women on the editorial board.