Title: Who are the gatekeepers of economics? Geographic diversity, gender composition, and interlocking editorship of journal boards Show Chinese title

Title: 谁是经济学的把关人？ 地理多样性、性别构成和期刊编辑部的交叉编辑职位

Abstract: This study investigates the role of editorial board members as gatekeepers in science, creating and utilizing a database of 1,516 active economics journals in 2019, which includes more than 44,000 scholars from over 6,000 institutions and 142 countries. The composition of these editorial boards is explored in terms of geographic affiliation, institutional affiliation, and gender. Results highlight that the academic publishing environment is primarily governed by men affiliated with elite universities in the United States. The study further explores social similarities among journals using a network analysis perspective based on interlocking editorship. Comparison of networks generated by all scholars, editorial leaders, and non-editorial leaders reveals significant structural similarities and associations among clusters of journals. These results indicate that links between pairs of journals tend to be redundant, and this can be interpreted in terms of social and intellectual homophily within each board, and between boards of journals belonging to the same cluster. Finally, the analysis of the most central journals and scholars in the networks suggests that journals probably adopt 'strategic decisions' in the selection of the editorial board members. The documented high concentration of editorial power poses a serious risk to innovative research in economics. Show Chinese abstract

Abstract: 本研究探讨了编辑委员会成员在科学中的守门人角色，创建并利用了一个包含2019年1,516种活跃经济学期刊的数据库，该数据库包括来自6,000多所机构和142个国家的超过44,000名学者。 从地理隶属关系、机构隶属关系和性别方面探讨了这些编辑委员会的组成。 结果表明，学术出版环境主要由隶属于美国精英大学的男性主导。 该研究进一步从网络分析的角度探讨了期刊之间的社会相似性，基于交叉编辑职位。 比较由所有学者、编辑领导者和非编辑领导者生成的网络，揭示了期刊群集之间存在显著的结构相似性和关联。 这些结果表明，成对期刊之间的联系往往具有冗余性，这可以解释为每个编辑委员会内部以及属于同一群集的期刊编辑委员会之间的社会和智力同质性。 最后，对网络中最具中心性的期刊和学者的分析表明，期刊可能在选择编辑委员会成员时采取“战略决策”。 记录的编辑权力高度集中对经济学中的创新研究构成了严重风险。