Women Still Rarely Named To Fill Top Posts At Life Science Journals

Life Science Journals The career of nearly every scientist-male or female on a university faculty includes a stint reviewing papers for professional journals. But at the higher levels of editorial leadership-the editors-in-chief and other senior-level journal editors -- the number of men far outpaces the number of women. For example, Science, Nature, Cell, the Journal of Molecular Biology, Genetics, Molecular and Cellular Biology, the Journal of Immunology, and many others all have a male scientist as the editor at the top. This disparity, according to those who have been involved in promoting opportunites for women in science, is a sign that the status of female researchers still lags behind that of their male counterparts. "It's important to get women in positions of influence in the science community," contends Ellen Weaver, who served as president of the Association for Women in Science (AWIS) in 1992-93. Such influential positions include journal editors as well as deans, grant-review panelists, and others who make decisions about careers and the direction of science, notes Weaver, a retired professor of biological sciences from San Jose State University. Breaking The Glass Ceiling: Editor Laurie Glimcher says the best way to succeed is to do top science. Weaver and others point out that women do hold some of the top editorial positions in the life sciences, just not many compared with men. For example, Kim Barrett and Penny Hansen head two of the 13 journals published by the American Physiological Society, headquartered in Bethesda, Md. Laurie Glimcher is one of four scientists sharing the editorial leadership of the journal Immunity. And Barbara Iglewski chairs the publications board overseeing all of the journals published by the Washington, D.C.-based American Society for Microbiology. Women scientists are also involved as associate editors (or by other titles, depending on the journal), working one step beneath the editors-in-chief. But of more than four dozen journals in the biological, biomedical, and other sciences surveyed by The Scientist, only one -- Science -- has more than a small fraction of these editorial positions filled by women. The selection process for editors-in-chief often involves a committee of past and present journal leadership and other scientists knowledgeable about the disciplines covered by the publication. A committee will usually publicize the opening, asking for nominations of individuals who can write well, can recognize good writing, and have enough experience and wits to recognize exceptional science. In the end, the editor-in-chief's most important duty is deciding which papers get published and which get rejected. Women scientists who hold the top editorial positions at life-sciences journals confirm that they have few female peers. They cite several reasons for this situation: the demographics in science today, "sticky floors and glass ceilings" that prevent women from advancing, and the difficulty facing some women scientists in getting known in influential circles. "I don't think it's any different for editorial positions than for any other positions in science," says Harvard scientist and Immunity editor Laurie Glimcher. Whether it's journal editorship or science deanship at a university, women are just beginning to make a mark, observes Glimcher, a professor of immunology and of medicine at the Harvard School of Public Health and Medical School, respectively. "There's an old-boys' network that is hard [for women] to crack. About the best way to do that is to do top-notch research that is well-respected." "Women don't get to the highest positions in science," maintains Janet Stavnezer, a professor of molecular genetics and microbiology at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center and one of two women deputy editors (out of seven such editors) at the Journal of Immunology. "It's just part of the whole thing. Some women have to take care of their children more than their husbands do. Also, women find it hard to be completely respected by their colleagues. [And] the old-boy network is a factor." Michael Springer, publisher of the nine specialty journals put out by the American Medical Association (AMA), agrees. "It's been an old-boys' club in editing for a long time," he says. Until recently, notes Springer, AMA journals had always been under the editorship of men. But as the association has sought editors in the last several years, search committees have made it a priority to diversify the editorial ranks as they consider candidates, a policy of George Lundberg, editor-in-chief of JAMA -- Journal of the American Medical Association and top editor for all AMA journals. The result has been the selection of women for the first time as editors-in-chief of two of AMA's specialty journals, Archives of Family Medicine and Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine. Some women editors acknowledge that they have few colleagues because there are still too few women in all of science. Kathryn Calame, a professor of microbiology at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, is an editorial board member at Science and Molecular Cell Biology and since 1992 has been the executive editor of Nucleic Acids Research. Calame suggests that one reason there are fewer female than male editors is the relatively small number of women scientists who head research programs. "You have to be a PI [principal investigator] and have your own research program before you're going to be asked to be an editor," she says. "There just aren't as many women as men who are PIs." "I think it's very important to remember that people who edit journals are in mid- to late career," says Harriet Zuckerman, vice president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in New York City and a professor, emerita, of sociology at Columbia University. Consequently, most of today's journal editors-in-chief would have received their Ph.D.'s in the 1960s or 1970s, a period when many fewer women than men were enrolled as graduate students in science programs compared with the last two decades, notes Zuckerman, who has conducted research on the scientific elite and women in science. "Editors are generally drawn from the pool of scientists who are full professors at major universities, a pool that doesn't have a lot of women in it," she says. No Easy Ride: Philip Abelson stresses that journal editing is an all-consuming job. Philip Abelson, senior editor for Science and a former editor-in-chief of the weekly journal, agrees that fewer women at the senior ranks in science translate into fewer women editors. "You don't pick some youngster [female or male] who's had no experience to be editor." Anyone chosen for editor-in-chief at a major journal must have "time and education and experience" to even become a candidate, he says. Abelson adds that a good journal editor will have a "hunger to learn, a hunger to identify what is significant about what is happening in science." No researcher, he continues, should take the attitude that being selected as an editor-in-chief or for another editorship is a great honor allowing one to sit back: "Your work just begins with the appointment." In particular, the editor-in-chief takes on the ultimate responsibility for making sure that each article gets a proper review and then determining whether the report is worthy of publication. Those in this position influence both the direction of a discipline and, to some extent, the success of careers. Editing can be an all-consuming task, but a rewarding one, acknowledges Abelson. He notes that as editor of Science, the work he did enriched his other activities: "You get into a phase that you're super-alert to what's going on." Glimcher notes that the route to top editorial positions is much the same for women as for men: "Do your work, do good science, and you'll get recognized." Doing that, however, can be more difficult for women than men: "How do you combine your child-bearing years with the need to be in the lab doing science that will get you recognition?" No Excuses: Jaleh Daie believes that "if enough effort is made, you can find qualified women." The argument that the demographic characteristics of senior-level scientists prevent more women from being selected for top journal editorships doesn't completely explain the current shortage for Jaleh Daie, a professor of botany at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and current president of AWIS. "I think that sometimes this is used as an excuse," Daie asserts. "If enough effort is made, you can find qualified women [to be journal editors]." Daie and others fear that women researchers aren't well known among opinion leaders in the scientific community, so when a journal seeks a new editor-in-chief, its search committees don't hear about enough women candidates from influential sources. "I think this [being known] is the heart of the issue," she says. To some extent, women might be their own worst enemies, maintains Weaver. "I think it's hard to make the right connections. Women still have this ethos that they have to do it alone and have to do it very well. They don't realize that science still primarily runs on who you know and where you went to school," she states. She advises women scientists interested in journal editing to seize any opportunity to work with an editor in order to gain experience. Weaver also suggests that women spread word of their interest among colleagues in order to get their names into the informal networks that supply nominees for editorial positions. Whom you know or who knows you may be even more important in moving into the editorial tier just below editor-in-chief. These deputy editors usually select reviewers to assess papers submitted for publication, discuss with authors changes that reviewers have called for, and advise the editor-in-chief on the final publication decision. In most cases, no applications are taken for these associates of the editor-in-chief, who usually has wide discretion in making these selections. No one suggests that editors tend to avoid women intentionally. "People are just more comfortable with those who are like themselves," observes Stavnezer. "So if more men are journal editors, they are more likely to think of their male colleagues when they have positions to fill." In fact, the women editors interviewed for this article often attribute their selection in part to someone with influence "thinking of them" when an opening occurred and suggesting their name to the right person at the journal. For example, Calame explains that she probably landed a place on the board of reviewing editors at because she was recommended by Marian Koshland, a professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley, and the wife of Science's editor-in-chief at the time, Daniel Koshland. No Regrets: Margaret Terzaghi-Howe notes that one can't be a chief science journal editor and "actively do research." On the flip side, Margaret Terzaghi-Howe, a staff scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory since 1975, says she found her progress stymied from lack of exposure in her field, especially in the late 1970s and early 1980s. During this time, when her children were very young, she worked part-time as a scientist. Last year, she was selected as an associate editor for two journals, the American Journal of Physiology and Radiation Research. "I tend to not circulate as much in the scientific community as my male colleagues, particularly a few years ago, when my kids were younger," she states. "I didn't want to travel a lot then, to go to meetings. That's certainly a disadvantage in this whole thing. I have no regrets about that, though. I got to do the things I like in science." Journal work usually is added to everything a scientist is already doing, including family responsibilities, especially for women. The extra duties may even discourage some women (and men) from accepting editor positions. Zuckerman says she never agreed to be an editor-in-chief because "to do the other kinds of things I wanted to do, I couldn't fit it [an editorship] in." And Terzaghi-Howe is not sure she would want to accept an offer to head a journal after seeing what editors-in-chief must do. "You can't do that [be an editor-in-chief] and actively do research," she comments, adding that she wouldn't want to scale back her research activity that much. Science is unusual in having a large number of women senior editors -- 10 of the journal's 16 senior editors are women, with its editor-in-chief (a part-time position) a man: Floyd Bloom, chairman of the department of neuropharmacology at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif. In contrast to the situation at most other journals, whose editors maintain academic appointments, the senior and associate editors at Science are full-time, without outside research or teaching activities, explains Science managing editor Monica Bradford. These Science editors are usually younger scientists with postdoctoral experience but not a faculty appointment they had to leave to join the journal's editorial staff. So what are the chances that more women will eventually fill leadership positions at journals, even becoming a majority, like at Science? Abelson believes it is "quite possible. I certainly wouldn't be negative about it." Harvard's Glimcher is a little concerned, however. "I would like to believe there is a momentum" toward more women being in position to assume top editorial posts, she says. But in her own field of immunology, Glimcher doesn't see significant growth in the number of senior women scientists or those approaching senior status. Room At The Top: Ellen Weaver says it's important to have women in influential positions. Assuming the numbers of women researchers do grow (and graduation rates in most areas of science suggest they should), then the recent experience at AMA, which hired two new women editors-in-chief, may foreshadow trends for other disciplines. In part, according to Michael Springer, this development reflects changes in the composition of the medical profession. "If you look at some of the specialties [in medicine], at family medicine and pediatrics in particular, there are an awful lot of women practicing in these fields," Springer points out. A Changing Field: AMA's Michael Springer notes that women are making headway in medicine. With more women editors come opportunities for other women to break into to the journal hierarchy, notes Stavnezer. "When I'm choosing a reviewer, I'm more likely to choose a woman," she says, although she adds that she believes she's less than twice as likely to choose a woman over a man. She also has the impression that other women editors behave similarly. "That's how you begin to move women up [the editorial ranks]," she comments. Lee Katterman, a writer based in Ann Arbor, Mich., is editor of Research News, a publication of the University of Michigan.

Women Still Rarely Named To Fill Top Posts At Life Science Journals

Interested in reading more?

Become a Member of