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'You can't be what you can't see': equity, diversity and inclusivity of editorial teams of dental journals

British Dental Journal (2022)Cite this article

Abstract

Introduction Equity, diversity and inclusivity in research is critical to ensure all of society contributes.

Aim This study analysed the gender and location (workplace) of editorial teams across 124 dental journals.

Methods All chief editors of the 91 dental journals listed on the journal citation report for 2021 were contacted to provide details of the numbers of chief editors, other editors and the editorial board members, plus a summary of their demographic information including gender, age (group) and location. If chief editors did not respond, publicly available information was collated for the analysis. The same publicly available information of 45 PubMed indexed journals not on the citation report and three emerging online journals was also retrieved.

Results Of the 159 chief editors across the 124 journals, 131 (82%) were men and 30% were based in the USA. Of the 1,265 other editors, two-thirds were from the USA, UK, Brazil and Japan. Of the 3,044 editorial board members, half were from the same four countries.

Conclusions 'You can't be what you can't see': women and people from many parts of the world cannot see themselves as chief editors, other editors or editorial board members of dental journals.

Key points

  • This paper provides a baseline to monitor equity, diversity and inclusivity of our dental journal editorial teams going forward.

  • Women and people from low- and medium-income countries are significantly under-represented across dental journal editorial teams.

  • This analysis shows that there is an urgent and pressing need to address this lack of equity, diversity and inclusivity of editorial teams across all dental journals.

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Acknowledgements

The author thanks the three chief editors who provided advice on the research and draft manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Associate Professor, Teaching and Research, School of Dentistry, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia

    Ratilal Lalloo

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  1. Ratilal Lalloo
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Correspondence to Ratilal Lalloo.

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The author declares no conflict of interest.

The study was considered exempt from ethics by the University of Queensland Human Ethics Committee. The study requested aggregated information on the gender and location of chief and other editors and the editorial board, hence the research was considered exempt from ethics.

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Lalloo, R. 'You can't be what you can't see': equity, diversity and inclusivity of editorial teams of dental journals. Br Dent J (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41415-022-5078-9

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