Mapping the geography of editors-in-chief

For the analysis, the master journal lists of the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) and Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) provided by Clarivate’s Web of Science Core Collection were used. The lists are available and downloadable in CSV format after registration on Clarivate’s website (https://mjl.clarivate.com/collection-list-downloads). Following a merge of the two lists, journals that were in both SSCI and SCIE were coupled. Consequently, 12,402 journals remained in the unified list (8,841 and 2,857 journals in the SCIE and SSCI databases, respectively, and 704 journals in both databases).

Notably, English-language journals are significantly overrepresented in the Web of Science database (Mongeon & Paul-Hus, 2016). The 12,402 journals publish papers in the following languages: English: 11,031; two or bilingual (of which one language is English): 146; multiple (of which one is English): 750; German: 86; Spanish: 82; Chinese: 17; Dutch: 15; and others (including Portuguese-, French-, Italian-, and Korean): 217. Therefore, 96.17% of the journals in the analysis publish papers in English; 88.95% publish papers only in English.

The editors-in-chief of journals were identified manually, with each journal’s website checked individually to discern who the editor-in-chief was. While this study found that the most commonly used term to define the person who is located at the top of the editor hierarchy is “editor-in-chief,” multiple other definitions are used that are equivalent to this title. The most popular definitions among this sample are editor (sometimes not accompanied by an editorial board), chief editor, senior editor, senior editor-in-chief, senior executive editor, executive editor, chief executive editor, general editor, general editor-in-chief, comprehensive editor-in-chief, coordinating editor, lead editor, journal editor, principal editor, managing editor (generally not a scientific role, but several journals in the field of mathematics define the top editor as the managing editor), and scientific director. In this paper, “editorin-chief” describes the person(s) at the top of the editorial hierarchy, regardless of how the journal names the position.

Although 9,098 journals (73.4% of the total) have only one editor-in-chief, for a considerable proportion of the journals, the editor-in-chief position is occupied by more than one person (calling them “editors-in-chief,” “co-editors-in-chief,” or “joint editors-in-chief”). For example, 2,001, 573, and 248 journals employ two, three, and four people as editors-in-chief, respectively. When five or more people serve as editors-in-chief, some journals define them as an “editor-in-chief collective” or an “editor-in-chief board.” In that case, high-level decision-making is exercised by a team rather than individuals, so journals with five or more editors-in-chief (i.e., 161 journals or 1.3% of all journals) were excluded from this analysis. In addition, some journals do not employ an editor-in-chief, meaning that each editorial board member has an equal role in editing the journal. Finally, in some cases, it was impossible to discern who the editor-in-chief was. The analysis thus ultimately contained 11,915 journals (96.1% of all journals in the dataset) edited by 15,795 people (a journal thus has, on average, 1.33 editors-in-chief).

For each editor-in-chief, the institution with which they were affiliated, and the institution’s geographical location were identified. If an editor-in-chief reported more than one institution as their affiliation, the first one was considered. Identifying the geographical location of the institutions with which the editors-in-chief were affiliated enabled a country-level analysis to be conducted.

Finally, some unique cases must be noted: (1) University law reviews (e.g., Boston University Law Review and California Law Review) are generally edited by law students affiliated with the respective university’s law schools who rotate annually; the editor-in-chief is typically a J. D. Candidate, a law student who applies for a “Juris Doctor” degree. (2) Mega-journals (e.g., PLOS ONE, PeerJ, and some MDPI journals) assign the manuscripts submitted to the journal to article editors, so the decision about the publication of each paper is generally made by the article editor instead of the editor-in-chief. The primary task of a mega-journal’s editor-in-chief is defining the journal’s overall strategy (see, for example, the letter of Emily Chenette after she was appointed as the new editor-in-chief of PLOS ONE: https://everyone.plos.org/2021/03/11/a-new-editor-in-chief-for-plos-one/). (3) Some journals employ in-house editors affiliated with the publishing house that owns the journal. In-house editors handle manuscripts comprehensively throughout the submission and publication process, including overseeing peer review and production steps and liaising with the scientific community. Sometimes, an in-house editor serves as editor-in-chief for more than one journal. In-house editors closely collaborate with editorial board members, who assist them in making the optimally professional decision about a manuscript’s fate. For example, Nature journals (including Nature) often employ in-house editors.

The data collection for this study ended on April 24, 2023.

The data of academic publishers were derived from Clarivate’s InCites analytical platform. In 2022, 13 academic publishers owned 69.63% of the 12,402 journals contained by SCIE and SSCI databases and included in the analysis. These publishers are as follows: Cambridge University Press, De Gruyter, Elsevier, Emerald, IEEE, Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, MDPI, Oxford University Press, Sage, Springer Nature, Taylor & Francis, Wiley, and World Scientific. Relevant data from these publishing houses are shown in Table 2.

In addition, 419 academic journals are published by professional organizations headquartered in the United States (and a few in Canada). Due to the reasons detailed in Section 3.2, these journals were also involved in the analysis.

In the analysis, the Web of Science’s country and territory grouping schema was used to map the geography of the editors-in-chief. Additionally, some unique country group classifications appear in the study, defined below.

For the term “Anglosphere,” we use Bennett (2004)’s definition: “the Englishspeaking Common Law-based nations of the world.” The more exclusive term, “Core Anglosphere,” is generally used to describe English-speaking nations like Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In this study, “Anglosphere” is used to describe the Core Anglosphere nations.

The term “EU-27” is also used in the study. It refers to the 27-member-state community of the European Union as of 2023.

It was found that the 15,795 editors-in-chief are based in 96 countries/regions worldwide (Figure 1). However, most editors-in-chief (i.e., 8,628 people or 54.62% of the sample) come from five countries in the Anglosphere (i.e., Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States). The United States is home to the most editors-in-chief in the world: 5,355 (33.90% of the editors-in-chief in the sample) work for United States-based institutions (Table 1). With 1,898 editors-in-chief (12.02%), the United Kingdom ranks second, while Germany, where 1,035 editors-in-chief are based (6.55%), comes third. As home to 794 editors-in-chief (5.03%), China ranks fourth. Next, the fifth and the sixth positions are occupied by Canada and Australia (4.21 and 3.77% of the editors-in-chief in the sample, respectively), two more English-speaking countries. Italy, France, Japan, and Spain are also included in the top 10 countries (see the full list in Appendix 1). In Latin America, Brazil is the top-ranked country, with 208 editors-in-chief (13^th place); in Africa, South Africa occupies the highest position (101 editors-in-chief, 22^nd place).

Figure 1.

Overall, the United States is home to 33.37% more editors-in-chief than the European Union’s 27 member states combined (i.e., 5,355 vs. 4,015 people). Moreover, 6.74 times more editors-in-chief hail from the United States than China. In the United Kingdom, 26.2% more editors-in-chief are based than in East Asian scientific powers like China, Japan, South Korea, and Chinese Taiwan combined. In sum, the highest-level decision-making in scholarly communication is dominantly exercised by countries of the Anglosphere.

As Table 2 demonstrates, the share of editors-in-chief from Anglosphere countries is the highest (i.e., over 50%) for publishing houses based in the United States and the United Kingdom. Elsevier—the largest publishing house in the world in terms of journal portfolios and the number of articles published in SCIE/SSCI-listed journals—is headquartered in the Netherlands. However, the share of editors-in-chief from countries of the Anglosphere still rises above 50%. Furthermore, the share of United States-based editors-in-chief for Elsevier is higher than for Wiley, a publishing house that originates in the United States (Figure 2). Notably, the share of China-based editors-in-chief is the highest for Elsevier compared to other major academic publishers. Elsevier journals have become attractive academic outlets for China-based scholars, a potential reason for this higher share of China-based editors-in-chief. In 2022, 188,418 articles were published by China-based authors in Elsevier journals, 113.12% more than those published by United States-based authors. For Springer Nature, Wiley, and Taylor & Francis, this share was 45.33%, 29.24%, and 16.40%, respectively, while in Sage journals, the share of articles by United States-based authors was 82.41% higher than for China-based authors.

Figure 2.

As for Springer Nature and De Gruyter, these cases reinforce that there is a relationship between a publishing house’s origin and its share of editors-in-chief by country. Regarding the former, Springer Nature was created in 2015, following the merger of the German publishing company Springer Science+Business Media and the United Kingdom-based Nature Publishing Group. Before merging the two companies, Springer was a European-leaning academic publisher, later becoming a major global player and the number one competitor to Elsevier. It is thus unsurprising that the share of Germany-based editors-in-chief is high for Springer Nature (exceeding that of the United Kingdom-based editors-in-chief). Moreover, the share of European editors-in-chief (i.e., France-, Italy-, and Spain-based) is also considerably high (Figure 2). In addition, De Gruyter, a Berlin-based academic publisher, employs a much higher share of editors-in-chief from Germany than from the United States, making it a unique case.

For MDPI, it was found that United States-based researchers occupy 31.73% of the editors-in-chief positions; however, the shares of Italy-, Germany-, and Spainbased editors-in-chief are also remarkably high (13.46, 9.62, and 8.65%, respectively). If we investigate which countries produce the most articles in MDPI journals, we observe a roughly similar pattern. In 2022, 11.16% of the articles were published by United States-based authors, followed by Italy-, Germany-, and Spain-based authors (8.22, 5.48, and 5.42%, respectively). Although most articles published in MDPI journals were by authors from China (i.e., 27.91% of all articles in 2022), the share of China-based editors-in-chief remained under 2%. When examining the share of articles published in MDPI journals in the total publication output of a country, one observes that MDPI has gained an extremely high market share in Europe (primarily in Southern Europe and Central and Eastern Europe) while remaining a marginal player in the United States and China (Csomós & Farkas, 2023). Still, MDPI employs many United States-based editors-in-chief and hardly any editors-in-chief from China.

Finally, we must note a special case. In our study’s dataset, there were 419 journals with names containing the term “American.” These journals are published by a total of 100 associations, societies, and institutes (henceforth called organizations), each of which is based in the United States. Based on information available on the websites of these organizations, these organizations tend to employ editors-in-chief from their memberships, most of whom are affiliated with United States-based institutions. It is, therefore, unsurprising that the share of editors-in-chief from the United States is exceptionally high among these journals (80.58% of the 479 editors-in-chief). In contrast, Canada’s share remains under 5% (Figure 2). Furthermore, in terms of the number of editors-in-chief, these journals employ more combined than Oxford University Press, the sixth top-ranked academic publisher (Table 2).

The examples of Pleiades Publishing and MAIK Nauka/Interperiodica Publishers, two academic publishers, further support the argument about the relationship between academic publishers’ origins and nationalities and the geography of their editors-in-chief. Historically, Pleiades Publishing has specialized in publishing research from Eastern Europe, while MAIK Nauka/Interperiodica Publishers was established jointly by the Russian Academy of Sciences and Pleiades Publishing. Accordingly, these two academic publishers collectively employ two-thirds of all Russia-based editors-in-chief; moreover, journals owned by MAIK Nauka exclusively employ Russian editors-in-chief.