A Gender Gap in Scientific Production: A Bibliometric Analysis of Journal of Soil and Water Conservation, 2001-2010.

The study was conducted to determine the presence of women in the Journal of Soil and Water Conservation (JSWC) through their scientific outputs in the form of journal publications. Bibliometric techniques and Web of Science were used to investigate the presence of women in the editorial board and publications in the Journal of Soil and Water Conservation from 2001-2010. Women scientists were identified by their first names using author information (name, academic degree, position, place of employment) on each of the publications. Ninety-one percent (31 out of 34) of the editorial board were men. Sixty-eight percent of male editors (21 out of 31) published from 1 to 25 articles of their own from 2001-2010. In contrast, only one out of the three female editors published her 2 articles during the same time period. The list of 100 most frequently published authors during this period indicated all male authors. One thousand publications were listed for the Journal of Soil and Water Conservation in the Web of Science in the period of 2001-2010.  Journal articles from randomly selected years (2004, 2006, 2009, 2010, a total of 310 articles) were analyzed for presence of female authors. Fifteen percent of articles (48 out of 310) are led by females. Thirty-four percent of the articles (105 out of 310) are co-authored by females. The results show significant gender gap in the editorial board of the journal. There appears to be a leadership gap between genders with eighty five percent of the articles published by the journal led by male authors.  Journal of Soil and Water Conservation does not have any published editorial policy and ethics code.