Article Category: Data Papers
Published Online: Feb 06, 2024
Page range: 124 - 137
Received: Jul 12, 2023
Accepted: Dec 07, 2023
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/jdis-2024-0002
Keywords
© 2024 György Csomós, published by Sciendo
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Purpose
This study aims to explore the geography of editors-in-chief to demonstrate which countries exercise the highest-level decision-making in scholarly communication. In addition, the study seeks to investigate the potential relationships between the origin and nationality of academic publishers and the geography of editors-in-chief.
Design/methodology/approach
The analysis involves 11,915 journals listed in Web of Science’s Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) and Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE). These journals employ 15,795 scholars as editors-in-chief. The geographical locations of the institutions the editors-in-chief are affiliated with were identified; then, the data were aggregated at the country level.
Findings
The results show that most editors-in-chief are located in countries of the Anglosphere, primarily the United States and the United Kingdom. In addition, most academic publishers and professional organizations that publish academic journals were found to be based in the United States and the United Kingdom, where most editors-in-chief are also based.
Research limitations
The analysis involves journals indexed in the Web of Science’s SCIE/SSCI databases, which are demonstrably biased toward the English language. Furthermore, the study only takes a snapshot of the geography of editors-in-chief for the year 2022, but it does not investigate trends.
Research implications
The study maps the highest-level decision-making in scholarly communication.
Originality/value
The study explores and maps the geography of editors-in-chief by using a massive dataset.