Geographic tokenism on editorial boards: a content analysis of highly ranked communication journals

1 Introduction

Research shows that scholarly knowledge production in mass communication, media studies and journalism has largely favored academics affiliated with institutions in North America and Europe (Demeter 2020; Ekdale et al. 2022a; Paasi 2005; Willems 2014). Even though there has been a sharp increase in publications from a wider variety of countries, including Australia, Israel, Hong Kong, and China, this work is still overshadowed by the amount of research published by researchers affiliated with institutions in the United States and the United Kingdom (Ekdale et al. 2022b). Mohammed (2021) argues that the overrepresentation of American and European academics leads to a system where knowledge produced within the majority of the world is undervalued and ignored. Research that is produced by academics in the Global North is typically received as a universal representation of truth whereas knowledge produced in the Global South is seen as case study research that explains the peculiarities existing only within the world’s peripheries (Hanitzsch 2019; Wasserman 2018). Such wide disparities amongst the regions of the world necessitates a critical assessment of the systems of global knowledge production and distribution to ensure it is representative of all voices, knowledge systems, and theories (Dei 2016).

Academic journals and their editorial boards play an important role within scholarly knowledge production. Editorial board members are often a journal’s key decision makers, markers of prestige, and manuscript reviewers, thereby acting as powerful gatekeepers within academia (Metz et al. 2016). Previous research shows that the diversity of a journal’s editorial board is related to the diversity of its research output (Goyanes and Demeter 2020); therefore, it is important to interrogate the composition of journal editorial boards. While certain parts of the world are consistently overrepresented on editorial boards (He et al. 2021; Karanja and Malloy 2022), so too are particular institutions (Goyanes et al. 2022). As such, it is important to look beyond the country of affiliation when assessing editorial boards to consider additional levels of analysis such as institutions and individual scholars. Doing so raises interesting questions about the potential for geographic tokenism on journal editorial boards – shallow and largely symbolic acts of internationalization in which a few representatives from underrepresented regions participate in social systems still dominated by majority groups (Brown 2019; Greene 1999). In other words, beyond examining the geographic diversity of editorial boards, it is worthwhile to consider whether certain countries, institutions, and individuals from underrepresented regions are, in fact, overrepresented on editorial boards while many countries, institutions, and individuals from these same regions are excluded. This is the question that animates the present study.

Our study explores geographic tokenism within academia by examining the editorial boards of highly ranked Communication journals. Specifically, we analyze the frequency of editorial board membership at the country, institution, and individual level. In addition, we examine the relationships between editorial board geographic diversity and the following variables: editorial board size, journal prestige, and editorial roles. Our results provide strong evidence for the existence of geographic tokenism on highly ranked Communication journal editorial boards through the overrepresentation of specific countries, institutions, and scholars from underrepresented regions. Further, we find that greater geographic diversity of editorial boards is associated with smaller editorial board size and higher journal rankings. In closing, we argue that, rather than challenging the hegemony of academia, geographic tokenism falsely signifies that certain countries, institutions, and scholars are the exceptions that prove the rule that scholars and scholarship from the Global North should dominate scholarly knowledge production. In other words, there is still much work to be done to truly internationalize journal editorial boards in the field.

2 Disparities in global knowledge production

Recent literature on scholarly knowledge production demonstrates a significant disparity in academic publishing amongst various regions of the world. Demeter (2017) conducted a study of 61 SCImago Scopus Q1 rated journals and reported that almost 50 % of the articles studied were published by an author based in North America, with Western and Northern Europe coming in second with 28 % of the articles. Africa, Asia, South America, and Eastern Europe had a combined representation of 1 % of all articles published in the same time period (Demeter 2017). Ekdale et al. (2022b) found that even in journal special issues focused on the Global South, most of the contributing authors were academics affiliated with institutions in the Global North. These recent findings are consistent with earlier studies of knowledge production in the field. For example, Lauf’s (2005) analysis of 40 mass communication and media studies journals published between 1998 and 2002 found that most of the authors were affiliated with institutions in the U.S. and there was a bias in favor of authors from English-speaking parts of the world. Bunz (2005) similarly reported a significant overrepresentation of American-based academics in his study of journals published by the International Communication Association and the National Communication Association. Albuquerque (2021) argued that the overrepresentation of Anglophone academics in global knowledge production is promoted by unfair ranking and assessment criteria which do not adequately promote regional journals from outside the Global North and those that are outside the Anglophone sphere. As such, Anglophone knowledge theories affect the countries in the periphery negatively because they reinforce the dependence of the periphery on western knowledge systems (Albuquerque 2021).

Geographic disparities in knowledge production are further evident even when we only consider research produced in and about the Global South. For example, Cohen (2022) found that most of the scholarship in media and communication studies about the African continent has largely focused on six countries – South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana, Zimbabwe, and Egypt. She argues that the overrepresentation of these six countries is the result of several factors, including a history of collaboration between these countries and the Global North, a bias that favors English-speaking former British colonies, and increased attention to Egypt following the Arab Spring. Similarly, in their study of knowledge production from BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) Comel and colleagues (2024]) found that Brazil and China outperform other BRICS countries in terms of quantity of publications, yet China was the only one of the five countries to place a majority of their publications in Q1-ranked journals. In a separate study, Comel and colleagues (2023]) also found that, within the Global South, certain elite institutions are overrepresented relative to peer institutions. Based on their findings, the authors conclude, “the power dynamics established on a worldwide scale – namely, the disparities between institutions in the Global North and South – tend to replicate themselves nationally, that is, within each scientific community” (p. 523). Therefore, it is important to examine disparities in scholarly knowledge production within as well as between countries to understand if participation throughout the Global South is widely distributed or concentrated amongst a few institutions and individuals.

3 Journal editorial boards as gatekeepers

Editorial boards play an important role as gatekeepers of knowledge dissemination (Demeter 2020; Metz et al. 2016). While journal editors and editorial boards wield significant power in knowledge production, Wellington and Nixon (2005) found that journal editors are inclined to downplay their positions of authority. The authors interviewed 12 journal editors who described themselves using terms like ‘filters,’ ‘mediators,’ and ‘facilitators’ while avoiding labels like ‘gatekeepers’ that would acknowledge the considerable power held by journal editors and editorial board members. Drawing from Bourdeiou’s (1996]) field theory, Wellington and Nixon (2005) argue that these self-characterizations are part of the ‘illusio’ of journal publishing – a denial of the power dynamics that make up the rules of game, giving the impression that these rules are somehow providential and benign. Yet, despite the fact that editors believe that they publish research that caters to the interests of their target audience, journal readers often disagree with editors about which subjects are most important to publish (Ray 2002).

Because journal editorial boards wield significant power over research output and therefore knowledge production, it is important to consider who is invited to serve as members of editorial boards. Previous research across a number of academic disciplines has found significant geographic and gender biases on journal editorial boards, such that men and scholars from the United States and Europe consistently are overrepresented (Dada et al. 2022; He et al. 2021; Hedding and Breetzke 2021; Karanja and Malloy 2022). Not only are certain regions of the world overrepresented, so too are elite institutions, particularly highly prestigious universities based in the United States (Goyanes et al. 2022). Albuquerque et al. (2020) report that scholars based at U.S. institutions make up at least 90 % of the membership of editorial boards of at least nine out of the 76 journals they studied. Additionally, the distribution of membership of journal editorial boards is largely centered around five developed Anglophone countries, namely the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and New Zealand (Albuquerque et al. 2020). The authors also report that the share of representation on journal editorial boards for the rest of the world is also not uniform. Their results show that the membership on journal editorial boards from Asia is dominated by Korea and Singapore, who represent 53.2 % of Editorial Board members in Asia. The story for Africa is not much different because a single country, South Africa, has 60.75 % of Africans on the Editorial Boards which were studied (Albuquerque et al. 2020).

These findings are particularly concerning when we consider that Goyanes and Demeter (2020) found a significant relationship between the geographic diversity of editorial boards and the diversity of resulting publications. In other words, a lack of diversity among editorial boards contributes to an academic field in which theory development, research, and practice are informed primarily by scholars and scholarship from a small minority of the world (Goyanes and Demeter 2020). Thus, in order to understand global disparities in scholarly knowledge production, it is important to consider the geographic diversity of journal editorial boards, both between and within countries (Ang et al. 2019; Goyanes and Demeter 2020; Goyanes et al. 2022).

4 Tokenism in academia

Even though the representation of historically underrepresented groups in academia is an issue of great concern, most of the inquiry has focused on the inclusion of underrepresented groups rather than the overrepresentation or tokenism of certain institutions and people (Brown 2019). Tokenism is a form of shallow, symbolic diversification in which a small number of individuals from underrepresented groups are presented as evidence of inclusivity without any deeper commitment to structural change. In her seminal study Men and Women of the Corporation, Kanter (2008) found that women entering male-dominated workplaces experienced heightened visibility, professional isolation, and being pigeonholed into gender stereotypes. The net effect of these experiences, Kanter argues, is tokenism, wherein women workers are cast into “empty positions with loft-sounding titles but no right to make changes or invent new ways to conduct a unit’s affairs” (278). While Kanter claims that gendered tokenism is the result of numeric disparities between men and women, Yoder (1991) argues that tokenism also can be attributed to power disparities between social groups, societal expectations about who belongs in particular spaces, and whether new entrants are seen as intruding in majority dominated-spaces. While early scholarship on tokenism focused on gender disparities, more recent work has highlighted the experiences of people of color (POC) within white-dominating spaces (Bizzell 2024; Trejo 2020). For example, tokenism can occur within academia when individuals from historically underrepresented groups, such as POC, are invited to participate in committees otherwise dominated by members of majority groups (Bizzell 2024; Brown 2019). While the inclusion of a small number of minority members can project a commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, tokenism rarely leads to substantive change (Greene 1999). In other words, tokenism provides legitimacy for majority groups to continue to serve as the primary decision makers, while members of minority groups are included to save face or satisfy diversity quotas (Alvesson and Gabriel 2013). Further, Flores (2016) argues that the underrepresentation of historically marginalized groups such as women and POC in higher education creates a fertile ground for tokenization.

While true diversification can challenge systems of power (Waisbord 2019), tokenism maintains the status quo while placing an undue burden on particular individuals from marginalized groups. An example of this can be found within institutions of higher education in the United States where white men hold the majority of positions of power while women and POC carry a disproportionate service load (Fox Tree and Vaid 2021; Guarino and Borden 2017). For scholars of color, this can result in a “minority tax,” which Trejo (2020]: 2753) defines as “the burden of extra responsibilities placed on faculty of color to achieve diversity and inclusion and contributes to attrition and impedes academic promotion.” Not only is tokenism detrimental to the select few who carry an undue burden, relying on a small number of individuals to repeatedly serve as representatives for the “other” signifies a broader disregard for the diversity within and between marginalized groups. For example, Bizzell (2024]: 1419) notes that Black women working in white academic spaces are often expected to speak on behalf of all Black people and serve as “a ‘spokesperson’ for diversity and quality.” Similar dynamics can be found among internationalization efforts within academia, wherein individuals from a specific country are asked to represent the whole of Africa, Latin America, or Asia. Sometimes a single scholar is tasked with serving as the sole representative of the entire Global South. While partial inclusion, in general, is preferable to total exclusion, it is unreasonable to expect a single individual with a unique cultural upbringing and distinct scholarly orientation, working at a particular institution within a specific country, to serve as the voice for an entire geographic region. Further, doing so neglects the power differentials that exist between countries and academic institutions within marginalized parts of the world (Luthra 2015).

Recognizing the pervasiveness of tokenism in academia, as well as the powerful gatekeeping role of academic journals, our study seeks to examine geographic tokenism on journal editorial boards. Specifically, we ask the following research questions about the composition of editorial boards:

The answers to these questions will reveal the extent to which the gatekeeping function of journal editorial boards is shared widely across marginalized parts of the world or if that power is concentrated among a small number of elite countries, institutions, and individuals.

In addition, we seek to understand the relationships between geographic distribution of editorial boards and editorial board size, journal prestige, and the geographic distribution of title roles on editorial boards. Therefore, we ask the following:

The answers to these questions will help us understand potential causes and consequences of editorial board diversity. Through the above research questions, we seek to provide new perspectives on scholarly knowledge production by examining the composition of editorial boards beyond country-level analysis.

5 Methods

Our dataset includes every individual listed on the editorial board for 30 highly ranked communication journals. To select the journals to include in our study, we reviewed the list of journals categorized under the subject “Communication” in the SCImago Journal & Country Rank database, a portal that indexes journals found in Elsevier’s Scopus database. Starting with the most highly ranked journal and continuing until we reached a total of 30, we reviewed each of the journals to consider whether it was properly categorized as a communication journal (i.e., the journal was primarily focused on research within the discipline). If there were any questions concerning the journal’s appropriateness for this study, we referenced the description, aims, scope, and editor to make our inclusion/exclusion decisions. For example, we excluded the 19th ranked journal, Vehicular Communications, which publishes research about roadside communication infrastructure and is edited by a professor of computer science. In order to complete the analysis for this study, extensive manual cleaning was required to match correct countries, institutions and individuals. Given the time-consuming nature of the data collection and cleaning, as well as the exploratory nature of this study, the sample included 30 journals to serve as a significant starting point from which future research can be based. The complete list of journals included in this study can be found in Table 1.

Between November 2023 and January 2024, two co-authors manually collected editorial board data by accessing each journal’s website and gathering each listed individual’s name, role on the editorial board, institutional affiliation, and country of institutional affiliation. If country data was missing, the coders accessed the affiliated institution’s website to identify the country. For the rare case in which an individual was listed as having multiple institutional affiliations, coders entered “Multiple” for location. Intercoder reliability was assessed on a randomly selected 10 % sample of journals (three journals) consisting of 314 editorial board members (10.6 %). Using Krippendorff’s alpha, intercoder reliability was achieved: Journal: 0.98; Name: 0.99; Position: 0.99; Affiliation: 1.0; Country: 0.99.

After collecting this data, we performed several rounds of cleaning to ensure consistency across each of our data categories and to properly match countries, institutions, and individual scholars. For example, it is not uncommon for one journal to include a board member’s middle initial and another journal to exclude it. Similarly, some journals list institutional affiliations in their original language while others translate the institution’s name into English. During the cleaning process, we also identified several individuals who were listed with one affiliation for one journal and a different affiliation for a second journal. This is unsurprising, considering the pace at which some faculty change affiliations. In such cases, we conducted Google searches to identify that individual’s affiliation as of February 2024 and updated all of their entries accordingly.

Finally, we appended regional data to each entry using the United Nations geoscheme, which organizes countries into the following 17 subregions:

1. Australia and New Zealand, Melanesia, Micronesia, Polynesia

2. Central Asia, Eastern Asia, Southeastern Asia, Southern Asia, Western Asia

3. Eastern Europe, Northern Europe, Southern Europe, Western Europe

4. Latin America and the Caribbean, Northern America

5. Northern Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa

Our data collection resulted in 2,952 unique editorial board members across the 30 highly ranked communication journals in our sample, ranging from 34 on the board of Journal of Interactive Advertising to 295 on International Journal of Advertising’s board (see Table 1). To analyze our data, we utilized chi square, Pearson’s correlation, and hierarchical linear modeling. Additional details about our analyses are provided in the findings discussion of each research question.

6 Findings

7 Discussion and conclusion

This study, a content analysis of the editorial boards of 30 highly ranked Communication journals, examined the geographical distribution of editorial boards and how that relates to editorial board size, journal prestige, and board member roles. Overall, findings revealed significant disparities in the geographic distribution of editorial board members. Consistent with previous literature (e.g., Goyanes and Demeter 2020), editorial board members are overwhelmingly affiliated with institutions in North America and Western Europe. Specifically, consider this contrast: each one of the five institutional affiliations most represented in our dataset (University of Amsterdam with 66 board seats, University of Texas at Austin with 53, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with 51, Michigan State University with 50, and Pennsylvania State University with 47) has more editorial board members than the following geographic regions: Southern Asia (6), Northern Africa (7), Eastern Europe (13), Latin America and the Caribbean (40) and Sub-Saharan African (32). It is impossible to argue that editorial boards are geographically diverse when individual institutions in the U.S. and Europe have more board members than entire continents.

When there are editorial board members from the underrepresented regions of Eastern Europe, Northern Africa, Southern Asia, South-eastern Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Sub-Saharan Africa, data show an overrepresentation of a small number of countries within these underrepresented regions, such as South Africa in Sub-Saharan Africa and Chile and Brazil in Latin America. The data further revealed that in most of the underrepresented regions found in this study, a small number of the same institutional affiliations appear. In the starkest example, The American University in Cairo was the only institution to appear for all of Northern Africa, accounting for seven editorial board positions. And relatedly, it is common for a small number of scholars from underrepresented regions to fill multiple editorial board member seats across these 30 journals. In Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, 8 of the 32 board member seats are accounted for by two people. In Northern Africa, one scholar filled four of the seven positions.

This overrepresentation of certain institutions and individuals from underrepresented regions exemplifies tokenism. As previously mentioned, instead of true diversification that leads to changes in existing power structures, tokenism places an unfair burden on a small number of people from marginalized groups while excluding many others from the conversation and maintaining the status quo (Brown 2019; Greene 1999). Most of the journals in our study had very few members from underrepresented regions in the world. While previous studies have produced similar findings concerning regional and country-level disparities (Goyanes et al. 2022; Goyanes and Demeter 2020), our institutional and individual level analyses reveal that some parts of the world largely are represented by a small number of elite institutions and specific scholars. In other words, not only do many journals have a small number of board members from, say, Africa and Latin America, several of these journals list the same scholars or different scholars from the same institutions on their editorial boards. As a result, when one scholar from an underrepresented region, for example, sits on five editorial boards, that person is tasked with having to represent an entire region at five different journals. Compare that with the expectations of, say, a scholar from an elite institution in the U.S. who may sit on the same editorial board as a colleague working at the same institution.

To be clear, our intention is not to critique scholars from underrepresented regions who serve on multiple editorial boards. To the contrary, we believe these scholars are highly accomplished individuals who have earned their places on journal editorial boards. Rather, it is our contention that there are many other qualified scholars from underrepresented regions who are also deserving of similar opportunities. These individuals can often be found in the pages of the very same journals in need of internationalization. They are also serving on the editorial boards of regional journals or in positions of leadership at regional associations in communication and media studies. Perhaps journals could also reconceptualize what it means to be qualified to serve on an editorial board – an individual may hold a great deal of relevant knowledge but lack a large number of publications in “prestigious” journals, sometimes due to factors beyond their control.

All of us have unique insights and blind spots, and none of us should be tasked with representing large parts of the world, on one or more editorial boards. True internationalization would mean greater participation as a whole from underrepresented parts of the world as well as greater diversity in membership – among countries, institutions, and individuals – from these regions. Thin internationalization, evidenced by the underrepresentation of Global South scholars as well as an overrepresentation of tokenized individuals, institutions and countries, demonstrates a lack of imagination and effort by academic journals when constructing their editorial boards.

One of the most insidious consequences of tokenism is exceptionalism. According to Lee (2020]: 390), exceptionalism “lifts a token into rarefied air while simultaneously separating him or her from supportive connections to aspects of their identity.” Exceptionalism both praises the excellence of the tokenized individual and uses this excellence to demarcate them as distinct from other members of the marginalized group they presumably represent (Cloud 1996). Repeatedly inviting the same scholars and scholars from the same institutions to serve on editorial boards, while failing to extend invitations to others from these regions, gives the impression that these scholars/institutions, and only these scholars/intuitions, demonstrate scholarly excellence and are worth paying attention to. True internationalization would pursue diversity of thought beyond singular representatives.

While one might assume that a larger editorial board would allow space for more geographic diversity (and hopefully, then, ideological diversity), findings show that that is typically not the case. These findings, that larger editorial boards tend to be less diverse, underscore the complexity of achieving geographic diversity, highlighting that simply increasing board size may not lead to greater representation. Interestingly, though, while larger editorial boards were not shown to be more geographically diverse, more prestigious journals (as indicated by rankings) were. Findings revealed that the higher ranked journals had more geographically diverse editorial boards, perhaps suggesting that prestigious journals might be more globally oriented or have a wider international reach.

Lastly, when considering the geographic distribution of titled roles on editorial boards, this study found 87.7 % of journal editors to be affiliated with institutions in North America and Western and Northern Europe. Such findings shed further light on the imbalance of representation in editorial board composition, particularly in roles with more editorial influence. Findings also align with the understanding that while some editorial positions are widespread, others might be influenced by regional academic infrastructures and networks. For instance, the role of Associate Editor is small but notably represented in Eastern Asia, suggesting regional nuances in editorial role assignments. The statistical significance of these findings indicates that the relationship between geographic distribution and editorial board roles warrants attention in the broader conversation on the inclusivity and representativeness of scholarly communication.

Collectively, findings from this study highlight inequities in the geographic distribution of editorial boards at multiple levels, which is consistent with previous research showing a strong imbalance in scholarly knowledge production favoring scholars from North America and Europe (Demeter 2020; Ekdale et al. 2022a; Paasi 2005; Willems 2014). Previous research makes even more sense in the context of the present study – if editorial board members serve a gatekeeping role by helping make important decisions about a journal’s editorial content (Metz et al. 2016) but their geographic makeup is heavily skewed, so too will be the journal’s output.

While clear patterns of inequity emerged from this research, so too did an exception. It is worth drawing attention to Annals of the ICA which boasts a geographically diverse leadership team (the Editor and Assistant Editor are both affiliated with South African institutions, and the four Associate Editors are from institutions in Chile, Germany, Kenya, and Singapore). The diversification of the Annals editorial board leadership team also coincided with an increase in ranking for the journal. Only three years of data are available in SCImago, but the journal moved from being ranked 20 in 2020 to 16 in 2021 to 8 in 2022. While an array of factors undoubtedly contributed to the elevated ranking of the journal, the field can look to Annals of the ICA as evidence that geographic diversification can coincide with increased prestige.

While revealing important findings, this study is not without limitations. Perhaps most significantly is that this study examined editorial board makeups based on each member’s listed affiliation at the time of data collection. One’s listed affiliation, of course, changes as people move from one position to the next and may not be indicative of an individual’s background, ethnicity, heritage or way of thinking. Future research could use other methods to examine cultural and ideological makeups of editorial boards. Also, this study did not examine all journals in the field, including many region-specific journals, so findings cannot be understood as indicative of the entirety of the field. Future research could examine the editorial boards of region-specific journals and lower ranked journals that were not included in this study. In addition, RQ4 examined the relationship between geographic distribution and titled roles (editor, editorial board member, etc.). The method of categorization used for the roles in RQ4 is, admittedly, open to criticism given that the power dynamics and levels of influence likely vary from one editorial board to another despite similar (and different) titles used; yet, this form of analysis provides a baseline understanding about geographic makeup of various types of board members. Future research should investigate this in more detail. Lastly, our data cannot provide insight into why so many journals rely on the same scholars, institutions, and countries as well as whether having editorial board members from the Global South increases a journal’s emphasis on internationalization. Future research should look for relationships between geographic tokenism on editorial boards and the geographic distribution of published scholarship (similar to Goyanes and Demeter 2020) as well as examine the behind-the-scenes processes at journals to better understand their criteria for adding board members and how journals recruit (or not) scholars from the Global South.

Ultimately, the patterns of inequity seen in the geographic distribution of editorial boards in the highly ranked communication journals in this study puts a spotlight on the lack of representation and participation in editorial decision-making processes in the field. Tokenism has negative personal, psychological and professional consequences for tokenized individuals (Ferreira and Santos 2022; Niemann 2011) and can inhibit a diversity of thought that is necessary to move beyond the problematic practice of Western-centered scholarship being considered normative. There are certainly systemic barriers inside and outside of academia far beyond the scope of journal leaders that contribute to the lack of representation of scholars from the Global South on the editorial boards, but the homogeneity seen in this study has social and practical implications for whose perspectives get included, what scholarly knowledge gets shared, and what understandings become hegemonic. The responsibility falls not only to journal editors, but also to universities, conference organizers, individual scholars, governments and others to collectively work together to remove impediments that scholars from regions outside of North America and Western Europe face in producing and sharing scholarly knowledge.