Editorial boards of information science and library science journals: roles, terminology, origin, and internationalization

Abstract

The objective of this work is to identify the different names, positions, and roles of editorial board members (EBMs) of journals in the Information Science and Library Science (ISLS) field of the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) and to establish a classification of the different roles to improve communication between editors and researchers. Among the 86 journals included in the ISLS field, the first and last names, position, and institutional affiliation of each EBM were extracted from 84 journals that allowed access to committee information. The information was standardized, and the positions were classified by consensus into major groups according to the role they play in the journals. The 84 journals included 4,122 positions held by EBMs, distributed in 201 positions and classified into 11 broad categories. The majority of positions were included in the Editorial Board category (n = 1,516), followed by Editorial Advisory Board (n = 734) and Associate Editor (n = 566). The journals were published by 36 publishers, with Elsevier and Taylor & Francis contributing the most journals (11 each). The journals in which the EBMs had the highest percentage of foreign members were those published in the Netherlands. This study provides a picture of the broad distribution of the roles and terminological titles that EBMs have in Information Science and Library Science journals. Because of this diversity, it is advisable to develop a guide to good editorial practices that includes both a description of the complex range of roles performed by EBMs and a unified nomenclature for these universal positions.