Chief editors in aquatic science and communication are more likely to oversee editorial boards from their own regions

Abstract We examined editorial board composition for aquatic science (AS, n = 217) and communication (CM, n = 308) journals indexed in Scimago's database in 2017 to explore geographic diversity, relationship between location of editors and their board members, and geographical relationship between editors and scientific output. We found that most journals in both fields are published in Europe (AS 50%, CM 62.3%) yet editors in AS ( n = 6,194) are based mostly in Europe (35.7%) whereas editors in CM ( n = 13,687) are based mostly in Northern America (47.8%). Chief editors are inclined to choose board members from their own geographical region, and this is commonplace regardless of geographic region. Scientific output is greatest in Europe (28.6% AS, 30.4% CM) followed by Northern America. In general, the number of editors per region aligns with each region's scientific output, although we found editorial underrepresentation for East Asia (AS) and South Asia and Europe (CM). Per country, relationships are idiosyncratic for each field and nation with notable editorial surpluses (when paired to scientific output) in the United States and the United Kingdom (both fields) and editorial deficits in China and India (both fields).