Abstract
Purpose :
Low-to-middle-income nations contain more than 80% of the world’s population; however, only 4% of published articles in Ophthalmology journals belong to these countries. Editorial bias due to lack of diversity could play a role in this matter. We aim to analyze the geographical composition of editors-in-chief and editorial board members among Ophthalmology journals.
Methods :
We conducted a cross-sectional study including all journals in the Ophthalmology section of the SCImago Journal & Country Rank as of November 2022. Global diversity in journals determined by the country of affiliation of editors-in-chief and editorial board members was assessed. Nations were classified by income according to the World Bank’s 2021 (low vs. lower middle vs. upper middle vs. high income). The association between editorial diversity and the Journal’s metrics and country of origin was analyzed using the x2 test for categorical variables and the Mann-Whitney U test for non-parametrically distributed continuous variables.
Results :
A total of 116 journals were included; 83.6% belonged to high-income nations. Only 18 (13.3%) editors-in-chief and 582 (13.5%) editorial board members were affiliated with middle-income nations. The most prevalent middle-income countries in editorial boards were Brazil (n=184, 4.26%), India (n=150, 3.47%), Turkey (n=42, 0.97%), and Iran (n=36, 0.83%). Only 40 (1.07%) editorial board members of Q1 journals were affiliated with non-high-income nations, most belonging to India (n=28, 70%). Journals from middle-income countries presented a statistically significant lower representation in Q1 and Q2 journals (p<0.001) and a higher proportion of open-access policies (p=0.019).
Conclusions :
The underrepresentation of low-to-middle-income countries represents an apparent issue in Ophthalmology journals. Editorial members from high-income nations may not be familiar with the economic burden, drug shortage, and lack of resources faced by most of the population. Promoting diversity and decreasing the possibility of editorial bias could lead to greater exposure of real-world data from resource-constrained settings and further development of clinical guidelines fitting for those scenarios.
This abstract was presented at the 2023 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in New Orleans, LA, April 23-27, 2023.