J. Luo1, R. Martins1, Z. Umar2, M. Amir3, Z. Jogezai2, W. Ahmed2, M. Barolia2, S. Razi1, K. Poulikidis1, M. Latif1, F. Bhora1 1Hackensack Meridian Health, Thoracic Surgery, Edison, NEW JERSEY, USA 2Aga Khan University Medical College, Medical College, Karachi, SINDH, Pakistan 3Dow International Medical College, Medical College, Karachi, SINDH, Pakistan
Introduction:
Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) remains a persistent issue in cardiothoracic surgery. While the impact of disparities in cardiothoracic surgery training and practice have been well documented, biases in academic cardiothoracic surgery have received less attention.
Akthough there are no widely accepted DEI metrics for journals, geographic and sex diversity across a journal’s editorial board may provide a surrogate measure of its commitment to DEI. We explored the association between journal quality and DEI metrics for cardiothoracic surgery (CTS) journals and investigated whether editorial diversity correlates with diversity across published articles.
Methods:
We collected the following data for 30 CTS journals: country of publication (categorized by income level), journal quality metrics (citation-based metrics e.g., impact factor [IF] and H-index), and sex and geographic representation across editorial boards and published articles. World Bank categories were used to classify countries a high-income, upper-middle-income, lower-middle-income, and low-income countries. The latter three categories were collapsed into a single category ("low-and-middle income countries; LMICs) for analysis. Bivariate correlations between numeric variables were assessed using Spearman’s correlation.
Results:
Female representation across editorial boards was 12.1%. Only 3/30 journals had a female editor-in-chief. Most editorial board members belonged to the United States (35.2%), with only 7.4% from lower-middle-income and 0% from low-income countries. We observed low female representation as first (21%) and corresponding (19%) authors.
Impact factor showed a strong positive correlation with female editorial representation (r = 0.70) but an inverse correlation with LMIC editorial representation (r = -0.45). Female editorial representation demonstrated a significant positive correlation with female first authorship (r = 0.45), while LMIC editorial representation correlated strongly with LMIC corresponding authorship (r = 0.85).
Conclusion:
Women and researchers from LMICs represent a minority of editorial board members and first or corresponding authors across CTS journals. However, a strong correlation between journal quality and female editorial representation indicates that top-ranked journals are spearheading efforts to improve gender disparities. Similar efforts are required to ensure more global geographic representation across editorial boards, and top-ranked CTS journals are best placed to lead by example. Our study also suggests that increasing diversity across editorial boards may be associated with greater sex and geographic representation across published articles.
