Mapping gender and geographic diversity in artificial intelligence research: Editor representation in leading computer science journals

BACKGROUND: The growing role of artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare, particularly radiology, requires its unbiased and fair development and implementation, starting with the constitution of the scientific community. PURPOSE: To examine the gender and country distribution among academic editors in leading computer science and AI journals. MATERIAL AND METHODS: This cross-sectional study analyzed the gender and country distribution among editors-in-chief, senior, and associate editors in all 75 Q1 computer science and AI journals in the Clarivate Journal Citations Report and SCImago Journal Ranking 2022. Gender was determined using an open-source algorithm (Gender Guesser™), selecting the gender with the highest calibrated probability. RESULT: Among 4,948 editorial board members, women were underrepresented in all positions (editors-in-chief/senior editors/associate editors: 14%/18%/17%). The proportion of women correlated positively with the SCImago Journal Rank indicator (ρ = 0.329; p = .004). The U.S., the U.K., and China comprised 50% of editors, while Australia, Finland, Estonia, Denmark, the Netherlands, the U.K., Switzerland, and Slovenia had the highest women editor representation per million women population. CONCLUSION: Our results highlight gender and geographic disparities on leading computer science and AI journal editorial boards, with women being underrepresented in all positions and a disproportional relationship between the Global North and South.