Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion on Editorial Boards of Global Health Journals

Muhammad Romail Manan; Iqra Nawaz; Sara Rahman; Areeba Razzaq; Fatima Zafar; Arisha Qazi; Kiera Liblik

doi:10.1007/s41649-023-00243-8

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion on Editorial Boards of Global Health Journals

Asian Bioeth Rev. 2023 Mar 16;15(3):209-239. doi: 10.1007/s41649-023-00243-8. eCollection 2023 Jul.

Authors

Muhammad Romail Manan^#¹, Iqra Nawaz^#², Sara Rahman¹, Areeba Razzaq¹, Fatima Zafar¹, Arisha Qazi¹, Kiera Liblik³

Affiliations

¹ Lahore, Pakistan Faculty of Medicine, Services Institute of Medical Sciences.
² Bahawalpur, Pakistan Faculty of Medicine, Quaid-e-Azam Medical College.
³ Kingston, ON Canada Faculty of Medicine, Queen's University.

^# Contributed equally.

PMID: 37399000
PMCID: PMC10018626 (available on 2024-07-01)
DOI: 10.1007/s41649-023-00243-8

Abstract

Journals have been described as "duty bearers" of upholding fundamental ethical principles that are essential for maintaining the ethical integrity of newly generated and disseminated knowledge. To play our part, we evaluated diversity and inclusion in the leadership and management of global and international health journals. We developed Journal Diversity Index (JDI) to measure three parameters of diversity and representation (gender, geographic, socioeconomic status). Relevant information regarding editorial board members of systematically screened journals was sequentially extracted and job titles were categorized into five editorial roles. Chi-squared test was utilized to study associations between gender and geographic distribution of editors along with the Medline indexing of the journal and its impact factor. Out of 43 journals included, 62.7% were published from two high-income countries. Women comprised 44% of the total editors. Among all the editorial board members, we did not find any information suggesting the representation of non-binary and transgender individuals. Furthermore, 68.2% of editors were based in high-income countries with 67.3% of the editors belonging to the Global North. This disparity in geographic region and socioeconomic level was observed across all five editorial roles. Among all women editors, more than 70% worked in non-Medline and non-impact factor journals. Only two journals scored "excellent" on JDI. Despite the continuous evolution of the definition of global health ethics, marginalized individuals, and their perspectives remain underrepresented in this field. Thus, we call for swift action regarding the decentralization and redistribution of global and international health journal editorial boards.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s41649-023-00243-8.

Keywords: Diversity; Gender equity; Global South; Global health; LMIC; Publication ethics.

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