A persistent lack of International representation on editorial boards in biology

The scholars comprising journal editorial boards play a critical role in defining the trajectory of knowledge in their field. Nevertheless, studies of editorial board composition remain rare, especially those focusing on journals publishing research in the increasingly globalized fields of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). Using the combined membership of N = 24 editorial boards of environmental biology journals, we tested for changes in the international representation among editors 1985-2014 with metrics used to the diversity of ecological communities. Over the course of these three decades, 3831 unique scientists based in 70 countries served as editors. However, 67.06% of editors were based in the USA and UK, while editors based in the Global South were extremely rare. The number of countries in which editors were based (i.e., Geographic Richness) did increase over the 30-year survey period, but most of these newly represented countries were in Western Europe. As a result, Geographic Diversity remained unchanged from 1985-2014. This -- coupled with the 420% increase in the number of editors serving each year -- resulted in a significant decline in Geographic Evenness over time. We argue that this limited geographic diversity can detrimentally affect the creativity of scholarship published in journals, the progress and direction of research, the composition of the STEM workforce, and the development of science in the Global South.