Gender Meta-Research in Neuroscience and Psychology

Written by A. Fotopoulou, FBS Gender Equity Lead

The majority of academics and researchers in the UCL Faculty of Brain Sciences are working on basic or clinical subfields of psychology and psychiatry, as well as basic or clinical subfields of the neurosciences and neurology. In recent decades, these fields have improvement in terms of gender parity and global access. Other areas, particularly positions of power and leadership, remain overly-represented by Western male academics. Recent reports on the editorial boards of top medical journals, and the sub-fields of psychiatry and neurology, have found them to be significantly skewed in favor of male editors (Amrein et al., 2011; Hafeez et al., 2019; Mariotto et al., 2020).

In a recently preprinted study (https://biorxiv.org/cgi/content/short/2021.02.15.431321v1), former FBS PhD student Eleanor Palser, Maia Lazerwitz and myself analyzed the editorial boards of the top 50 journals in each of the two fields of psychology and neuroscience, as listed in the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) list in Clarivate Analytics’ Journal Citation Reports, in terms of the editors’ country of affiliation and gender. These lists are constructed based on journal impact factor, and therefore represent, for many, the most prestigious journals in these fields.  We wish to emphasize at the outset, however, that the implications of these findings are limited to inferred gender from publicly available information, not self-reported. Our study also did not address many other traits, identities and motives that may explain and enrich the implications of our data on gender and geographical affiliation, such as for example areas of double disadvantage and intersectionality; the consequences of membership in multiple discriminated against social groups (Cole, 2009). This study merely sets the foundations for much deeper EDI studies led at the Faculty and beyond.

Our results indicated that amongst the 2,864 editors in psychology and 3,093 editors in neuroscience, USA-based academics significantly outnumber those from other countries, and male editors significantly outnumber female editors (Figures 1 and 2). The situation was widespread, and not driven by a few “bad apples”, with ten times as many journals in neuroscience comprised of more than 70% male editors (40%) compared with the same proportion of female editors (4%). The ratio was similar in psychology, with 22% of journals comprised of more than 70% male editors compared to just 2% that had the same proportion of women.

When editorial boards were sub-divided into the categories of 1) editors-in-chief and their deputies, 2) associate and section editors, and 3) editorial and advisory board members, the only category where there was not a significant gender imbalance was in the editors-in-chief of psychology journals and their deputies. These findings highlight that some of the most powerful positions one can hold in academic psychology and neuroscience remain largely occupied by male, and Western, academics. We hope this paper will represent a call to journals in the fields of psychology and neuroscience to actively geo-diversify their editorial boards, and explicitly define their policies and selection criteria for editorial board appointment.

Of course, academic psychology and neuroscience are fields that have been traditionally dominated by men, and the US has a larger population than the countries. It is possible that psychology and neuroscience have also grown to a greater extent as academic disciplines in the US than elsewhere. Moreover, we considered only English-speaking journals, and journals associated with US-based societies were well-represented. While history, affiliation, language and size may explain some of the observed differences, it is of note that the gender ratios of undergraduate and graduate students entering these fields has dramatically changed in recent decades, and most science appears to be shared globally in English. Therefore, to the extent that academic fields wish to avoid restricting the progression and scientific interests of women and non-US based scholars, gender and affiliation diversity of leadership positions in these fields should also change. Journal editors exert considerable power over what is published, and by extension, the direction of an academic discipline and the career advancement of authors. It is important then, to minimize any biases extrinsic to the merit of the work that affect publication decisions. One way to achieve this to ensure a diverse pool of editors, such that biases are diluted, and their influence reduced.