Editorial Board Representation by Women in Leading Dental Journals

Background: Gender imbalances persist in high-ranking leadership roles, particularly in academia. Extensive research has revealed a consistent lack of representation of individuals with a female gender expression as journal editors across various scientific domains, including but not limited to medical, surgical and dental journals. This lack of representation can influence the editorial direction. Objective: Our study aims to further analyze this issue by examining the number of editorial roles filled by individuals with female gender expression in the top 36 dental journals by impact factor and Altmetric score. Methods: We compiled a list of the top 36 dental journals, prioritizing citations with a strong emphasis on impact factor and altmetric scores. The “Altmetric” score is an approach that assesses the frequency of a journal being mentioned by news outlets or social media. The gender of editorial board members was determined through publicly available information, reviewed by two independent researchers. We analyzed the proportion of individuals with female gender expression in leadership and editorial positions and correlated these findings with the journal’s impact factor and Altmetric score. Results: Individuals with female gender expression represented 51.35% of editorial board positions in journals with an impact factor ranging from 0 to 2, 25.60% in journals with an impact factor of 2 to 5 and only 21.63% in journals with an impact factor exceeding 5. Higher altmetric scores were associated with lower representation of individuals with female gender expression on editorial boards. Conclusion: Our study highlights the persistent underrepresentation of individuals with a female gender expression in editorial board positions. Journals with impact factors higher than 5 showed the smallest percentage of individuals with a female gender expression in editorial board positions, indicating a loosely inverse relationship.