Leadership diversity in science: Women editors of dental journals are underrepresented compared to women editors of medical journals.

Objectives: Increasing numbers of women are entering dentistry and medicine and it is anticipated that global leadership positions represent this demographic. In this study, the proportion of women editors of prominent medical and dental journals was compared.

Methods: A list of dental and medical journals, ranked by impact factor, were obtained through Web of Science Journal Citation Reports 2020. Chief and associate editors of these journals were identified as either a woman or a man.

Results: Ninety one dental journals had 100 editors, 15 of whom were women. There were significantly less women chief editors than men (p < 0.0001) compared to the percentage expected (global proportion of women and men dental scientists [IADR] membership: 43.72% women). Of ninety one comparable medical journals ranked by impact factor, there were 103 chief editors, 41 of whom were women. There was no significant difference in the number of men and women chief editors for medical journals (p = 0.242). There were significantly fewer women chief editors for dental journals compared to medical journals (p < 0.0001). There was no significant difference between the mean impact factor for journals with women and men editors for dental (p = 0.556) or medical (p = 0.492) journals. For the 91 dental journals, there were a total of 828 associate editors, of whom 638 were men and 190 were women and this difference was significant (p < 0.0001).

Conclusions: The results demonstrate that women in dental research have attained editor positions with less frequency than men indicating the presence of barriers to progress in scientific dental publishing.