The Imprint of a Few: Editorial Authority and Epistemic Inequalities in Elite Biology Journals

As scholarly publishing becomes increasingly commodified, market-oriented definitions of excellence are reshaping the organization and hierarchization of scientific knowledge. Using a sociology of elites framework, this article examines how the social conditions under which knowledge is produced, evaluated, and circulated shape epistemic inequalities. It focuses on journal editors—who play a central role in defining legitimate knowledge—but remain understudied as holders of scientific and editorial authority. Through the prosopographic and bibliometric analysis of 229 editors from 97 leading biology journals, we investigate whether editorial authority is structured primarily by scientific authority, market-oriented authority, or a combination of both. We examine how editors’ sociodemographic characteristics and scientific, institutional, international, and extra-academic capital relate to journal characteristics and research topics. The findings reveal a dual structure of editorial authority: editors with strong scientific and institutional capital are associated with historically less valued specialties, such as marine biology and animal science. By contrast, younger, often women, professional editors are more frequently associated with commercial journals publishing research on highly marketable topics, such as cancer biology and immunology. The article contributes to the sociology of scientific knowledge by showing that epistemic inequalities are not produced solely through unequal distribution of scientific resources. They also arise through the interaction between scientific and market-oriented forms of authority within the editorial field. The increasing commodification of scholarly publishing therefore reconfigures the principles governing the legitimation and hierarchization of knowledge, while introducing market-based definitions of relevance and excellence alongside—and sometimes in tension with—established scientific ones.