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Characterizing The Demographic Composition Of Editorial Board Members Of High-ranking Vascular Surgery Journals
Saaniya Farhan, Cristina Micale, Conor Dougherty, Matthew Ruiz, Alya Wilkinson-Hayat, Adam Ostrovsky, Michael Nooromid, M.D., Babak Abai, M.D..
Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, Philadelphia, PA, USA.
OBJECTIVES: Editorial boards significantly influence peer-reviewed academic journals
. Vascular surgery is a rapidly evolving specialty, yet the demographic and academic composition of its journal editorial boards have rarely been explored. This retrospective study examined the editorial board composition of high-ranking vascular surgery journals by gender, race/ethnicity, academic position, H-index, and publication number. We secondarily compared demographic composition across American and non-American journals.
METHODS: A list of 23 journals was generated from Clarivate Analytics using the search term "vascular surgery," and the 10 with the highest impact factors were selected for the study. Lists of editorial board members and their positions were obtained from the journals’ official websites. Only active members found on Elsevier’s SCOPUS database were included, and their H-index and publication number were extracted. Gender, academic position, and race/ethnicity were determined using university and hospital websites. Those with no public information for gender and race/ethnicity were excluded from analyses. Statistical analyses were performed in R Studio R 4.2.1. Fisher’s exact and Kruskal-Wallis tests were used to compare between journals.
RESULTS: As of April 2025, 773 board members were included in the study with 84% (648/773) being male and 16% (125/773) being female. Higher proportions of male to female board members were seen across all journals except Seminars in Vascular Surgery (53% female; 9/17 vs 47% male; 8/17). All journals comprised largely of Non-Hispanic White (73%; 566/773) and Asian (23%; 176/773) individuals, with Non-Hispanic Black and Hispanic members comprising only 3.8% of all boards. Relative to females, males have a significantly higher mean H-index (35 vs 23; p<0.001) and publication total (205 vs 123; p<0.001). A higher proportion of males are full professors (35% (206/592) vs 13% (14/111)), while more women are associate professors (49% (54/111) vs. 22% (129/592)). The proportion of male to female editorial board members was comparable across American (386 to 80; 83% male) and non-American journals (262 to 45; 85% male) (p=0.4). However, non-American journals exhibited a significantly lower mean H-index (30 vs 36, p=0.002).
CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggest a significant disparity by gender and race/ethnicity globally within vascular surgery editorial boards, which may limit the breadth of perspectives guiding peer review. Future work should evaluate longitudinal trends in editorial board composition and whether board diversity correlates with more equitable scholarship.
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