The Gender Gap in Land Sciences: A Review of Women’s Presence on the Editorial Boards of Peer-Reviewed Journals

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The topic is of interest to many in academia, and it seems as if the authors used a systematic approach to collect the data that were used in their descriptive statistics. However, there are many places throughout the paper where the details are not clear enough to permit someone else to replicate the findings. In many instances, it was not clear whether the authors were discussing women as editors, or women as authors, and this needs to be much clearer throughout the manuscript. Additionally, the objectives are not clear from the start, which makes it difficult to assess whether the methods are appropriate to answer the research questions. I have detailed these and other concerns below.

I would like to see the introduction better organized around the research question. At the moment, it reads more like a collection of facts rather than a structured synthesis of the literature. To aid the authors in this, a good rule is to stick to one main point per paragraph and allow the topic sentence at the start of the paragraph to convey to the reader what the entire paragraph will be about. A new thought or topic should be put into a new paragraph.  

Regarding the research question itself, it is currently “do all women benefit equally?” which is neither clear nor concise nor actionable. The question as written also does not reflect the topic of the paper according to the title, which is a review of women’s contributions, not whether they benefit equally (equally to what?). The authors appear to use the data they collect to answer a larger number of questions that were not posed in the introduction. I recommend the authors clarify their research objective (and perhaps sub-objectives as well) and state them fully in the introduction. Then, the authors should focus only on those objectives throughout the rest of the paper and refrain from discussing topics beyond the scope of the study.

The keywords used by the authors in Step 1 of their methods seem to be missing alternative spellings (e.g., modeling, landcover, land cover, etc.). How did this use of only some spellings impact the selection of articles and journals?

Some of the decisions in Step 2 are ambiguous so I was not able to assess whether the methods were robust. More details are needed to explain the justification for when journals were dropped, etc. Also, line 135-136 is not clear what the authors are trying to say here.  

The paper would  benefit from a thorough review for inconsistencies in grammar and the names of journals, which appear to be incorrectly named in several instances. The figure numbering/referencing also seems to be wrong in some places. 

Table 1: It is unclear what “participants” means in Table 1. Are these editors, as the paper title suggests? Or are they any authors (which seems to be a secondary, unnamed objective in the paper)? Also, why are some entries bolded? Why do some journals have underscores and others do not? Is this simply a lack of cleaning? If found it very difficult to interpret the data in this table.

Figure 5: this is not an appropriate method for cartographic display. The use of a single dot at the center of the country cannot be used to show a distribution, and the meaning of the multiple buffer dots is unclear. Please revise according to the data, which are country-level, so the entire country must be symbolized the same. 

The Discussion does not interpret the results that the authors found, but instead repeats the findings and then provides already-known information from other, previous studies. There is a missed opportunity to explain what is happening rather than repeating why women are disadvantaged in this space. For example, in Figure 6, how do the authors explain the situation in which female representation decreased as a share of the percentage since 2015? What are some reasons for this? Is it because there was an increase in the number of editors? Were women leaving their editor positions? These are the types of interpretations that would be interesting to know.

Line 329-331: Is this supposed to be in the paper?  

Author Response

20 Sep. 2022

Dear Reviewer 

The journal of Land

Subject: Submission of revised paper entitled" The Gender Gap in Land Sciences: A Review of Women's Contribution to the Editorial Boards of Peer-reviewed Journals "

Thank you for your letter and the opportunity to revise our paper on ‘Journal of Land.

Here is a point-by-point response to your comments and concerns.

1. The topic is of interest to many in academia, and it seems as if the authors used a systematic approach to collect the data that were used in their descriptive statistics. However, there are many places throughout the paper where the details are not clear enough to permit someone else to replicate the findings. In many instances, it was not clear whether the authors were discussing women as editors, or women as authors, and this needs to be much clearer throughout the manuscript. Additionally, the objectives are not clear from the start, which makes it difficult to assess whether the methods are appropriate to answer the research questions. I have detailed these and other concerns below.

Authors response: Thank you for your time and concern. It would encourage us to revise with more knowledge of the subject and make it obvious. 

2. I would like to see the introduction better organized around the research question. At the moment, it reads more like a collection of facts rather than a structured synthesis of the literature. To aid the authors in this, a good rule is to stick to one main point per paragraph and allow the topic sentence at the start of the paragraph to convey to the reader what the entire paragraph will be about. A new thought or topic should be put into a new paragraph.

Authors response: Thank you for your comment. We agree and have rewritten the introduction.

3. Regarding the research question itself, it is currently “do all women benefit equally?” which is neither clear nor concise nor actionable. The question as written also does not reflect the topic of the paper according to the title, which is a review of women’s contributions, not whether they benefit equally (equally to what?). The authors appear to use the data they collect to answer a larger number of questions that were not posed in the introduction. I recommend the authors clarify their research objective (and perhaps sub-objectives as well) and state them fully in the introduction. Then, the authors should focus only on those objectives throughout the rest of the paper and refrain from discussing topics beyond the scope of the study.

Authors response: Thank you for pointing that out. We revised the research questions. 

4. The keywords used by the authors in Step 1 of their methods seem to be missing alternative spellings (e.g., modeling, land cover, land cover, etc.). How did this use of only some spellings impact the selection of articles and journals?

Authors response: Thank you for pointing this out. In the first step, we use Publish or Perish software for collecting data. In the setting of the software, we chose google scholar as a source and automatically applied missing spellings because used the google engine. On the other hand, because google scholar indexes scientific sources missing spelling in the title is very rarely for high-quality journals. Therefore, we can say that the error caused by spelling mistakes does not affect the results

5. Some of the decisions in Step 2 are ambiguous so I was not able to assess whether the methods were robust. More details are needed to explain the justification for when journals were dropped, etc. Also, line 135-136 is not clear what the authors are trying to say here.

 Authors response: Thank you for your comment. We revised it. In this step, we tried to include the journals that match our search terms 80% or more.

6. The paper would benefit from a thorough review for inconsistencies in grammar and the names of journals, which appear to be incorrectly named in several instances. The figure numbering/referencing also seems to be wrong in some places

Author’s response: We have checked the whole table and corrected all the items, also the figures were corrected according to the data. And for better readability, the size of the fonts for the shape of the pie charts has been increased as much as possible.

7. Table 1: It is unclear what “participants” means in Table 1. Are these editors, as the paper title suggests? Or are they any authors (which seems to be a secondary, unnamed objective in the paper)? Also, why are some entries bolded? Why do some journals have underscores and others do not? Is this simply a lack of cleaning? If found it very difficult to interpret the data in this table.

      Authors response: Thank you for this point of view. We revised it. Participants mean is Editors.          The share of men and women on the editorial board has been expressed as a percentage.

8. Figure 5: this is not an appropriate method for cartographic display. The use of a single dot at the center of the country cannot be used to show distribution, and the meaning of the multiple buffer dots is unclear. Please revise according to the data, which are country-level, so the entire country must be symbolized the same.

Authors response: Thank you for your comment. We revised the figure. 

9. The Discussion does not interpret the results that the authors found, but instead repeats the findings and then provides already-known information from other, previous studies. There is a missed opportunity to explain what is happening rather than repeating why women are disadvantaged in this space. For example, in Figure 6, how do the authors explain the situation in which female representation decreased as a share of the percentage since 2015? What are some reasons for this? Is it because there was an increase in the number of editors? Were women leaving their editor positions? These are the types of interpretations that would be interesting to know.

      Authors response: Thank you for your comment. In the discussion in each paragraph, we first mention our result, then compare it with other results studied, and finally discuss it.

1. Line 329-331: Is this supposed to be in the paper?

Authors response: Thank you for your insightful comment. We revised it.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The Gender Gap in Land Sciences: A Review of Women's Contribution to the Editorial Boards of Peer-reviewed Journals

It seems like this paper belongs in a journal about academic publishing or gender and the sciences, as the argument/ topic is not about how we as land scholars understand and learn about emerging issues in Land Science. For example, the conclusion and recommendations could hold for any journal not just ones in land sciences.

Other comments:

The title is misleading.  Nowhere does the paper discuss women's contributions.  It only focuses on women's presence and absence on board which is not a contribution. A contribution is a qualitative assessment - this paper does not discuss what women contribute but whether or not they are present and in what countries are more women present.  But again, why does that matter?  The authors need to demonstrate that having women on a board generates some kind of outcome for how we as scholars understand land science.

The paper should not start with gender and sustainability, but rather a statement about gender equity and perhaps gender equity and education or gender equity in the sciences. As the paper is not about sustainability, this opening is awkward.

Is the paper about women in science (line 51) or women in science fields in academia?  All of precision is essential for a cogently written paper with a strong argument.

I agree with the Fox citation, but the question is why women say yes more than men?  What are the gender norms at play? And how do these normative expectations figure into their agreement to serve on boards (which is unpaid labor). While it is true that sometime Associate Editors and Editorial Review Board members are invited or appointed to serve, it is also the case that journals place open calls for reviews and scholars opt in / volunteer.  This volunteering process is not mentioned in the paper, and how and who is able to volunteer and how does volunteering influence composition in the land sciences?

With respect to hiring, tenure and promotion, junior scholars often do not serve on boards. First, it is a timely commitment that takes away from research and publishing which is paramount to hiring, tenure and promotion and second given that all reviewing is not double blind and review boards are published, junior scholars often fear retribution for critique and therefore do not serve on boards.

Line 43 should be “one way to assess” as publications etc are only one way to assess the gender gap.

Line 87: what is a productive country?

The circle graphs are very hard to read.

Line 326: Is this recommendation realistic? Give preference to women in hiring?  My understanding and experience on boards of high impact journals is that this is free labor or that the university will give a faculty member a course release to serve in an editorial position (as the university receives prestige from one of its faculty members doing such service). Women are not hired per se (to my knowledge)

Overall, the introduction needs the research questions asked when frmaing the inquiry  or the objectives of the paper, and more importantly why does board composition matter vis-à-vis the knowledge published in Land Sciences and what we as scholars have access to? 

Land is a journal about land issues not a journal about academic publishing or gender and higher education.  Does mpdi have an education journal in its portfolio?

Author Response

23 Sept. 2022

Dear Reviewer 

The journal of Land

Subject: Submission of revised paper entitled" The Gender Gap in Land Sciences: A Review of Women's Contribution to the Editorial Boards of Peer-reviewed Journals "

Thank you for your letter and the opportunity to revise our paper on ‘Journal of Land.

Here is a point-by-point response to your comments and concerns.

1. It seems like this paper belongs in a journal about academic publishing or gender and the sciences, as the argument/ topic is not about how we as land scholars understand and learn about emerging issues in Land Science. For example, the conclusion and recommendations could hold for any journal not just ones in land sciences.

Author response: Thank you for taking the time to review this manuscript; the authors appreciate it. Regarding the topic, this manuscript is actually for a spatial issue in the land journal (Women's Special Issue > Series: Land System Science), and we developed this manuscript for this IS that fits this.

2. The title is misleading.  Nowhere does the paper discuss women's contributions.  It only focuses on women's presence and absence on board which is not a contribution. A contribution is a qualitative assessment - this paper does not discuss what women contribute but whether or not they are present and in what countries are more women present.  But again, why does that matter?  The authors need to demonstrate that having women on a board generates some kind of outcome for how we as scholars understand land science.

Author response: Thank you for your comment. We revised the title. To our knowledge, up to now, there are too many studies about the gender gap in journals but the field of "land" has not yet been subjected to such an analysis.

3. The paper should not start with gender and sustainability, but rather a statement about gender equity and perhaps gender equity and education or gender equity in the sciences. As the paper is not about sustainability, this opening is awkward.

Author response: Thank you for your comment. We agree and removed it.

4. Is the paper about women in science (line 51) or women in science fields in academia?  All of precision is essential for a cogently written paper with a strong argument.

Author response: Thank you for pointing this out. We revised it.

5. I agree with the Fox citation, but the question is why women say yes more than men?  What are the gender norms at play? And how do these normative expectations figure into their agreement to serve on boards (which is unpaid labor). While it is true that sometimes Associate Editors and Editorial Review Board members are invited or appointed to serve, it is also the case that journals place open calls for reviews and scholars opt in / volunteer.  This volunteering process is not mentioned in the paper, and how and who is able to volunteer and how does volunteering influence composition in the land sciences?

Author response: Thank you for your insight into the manuscript. We agree, but this is a review paper and we collected data from a search engine and do not have access to journal data. For the volunteer process access and journal, management cooperation is a requirement.

6. With respect to hiring, tenure and promotion, junior scholars often do not serve on boards. First, it is a timely commitment that takes away from research and publishing which is paramount to hiring, tenure and promotion and second given that all reviewing is not double blind and review boards are published, junior scholars often fear retribution for critique and therefore do not serve on boards.

Author response: Thank you for pointing this out. We agree.

7. Line 43 should be “one way to assess” as publications etc. are only one way to assess the gender gap.

Author response: Thank you for pointing this out. We revised it.

8. Line 87: what is a productive country?

Author response: thank you for your comment, we revised it. “Development countries”

9. The circle graphs are very hard to read.

Author response: Thank you also for your comment. We revised the graphs. For better readability, the size of the fonts for the shape of the circle graphs has been increased as much as possible. In addition, the data whose value is very small has been removed from the graph, but the values reported in the text include all data and no data has been omitted.

10. Line 326: Is this recommendation realistic? Give preference to women in hiring?  My understanding and experience on boards of high impact journals is that this is free labour or that the university will give a faculty member a course release to serve in an editorial position (as the university receives prestige from one of its faculty members doing such service). Women are not hired per se (to my knowledge)

Author response: thank you for your comment. We are agreeing with that but It was not a suggestion to be hired as an editorial member of the journals directly. As noted in the following paragraph, the leaking pipeline should be significant at the start of the academic year.

11. Overall, the introduction needs the research questions asked when framing the inquiry or the objectives of the paper, and more importantly why does board composition matter vis-à-vis the knowledge published in Land Sciences and what we as scholars have access to? 

Author response: Thank you for your comments. We revised the introduction. Regarding the second question, we kindly mention it in the seventh comment 7. The gender gap in the editorial board is just one way to assess inequality.

12. Land is a journal about land issues not a journal about academic publishing or gender and higher education.  Does MPDI have an education journal in its portfolio?

Author response: Thank you for your comment. We agree, yet the gender gap is a hot topic in academia right now, which is why we developed this manuscript for this Special edition.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper addresses a very important topic and suites the special issue well. Take note of the few suggested edits

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

23 Sept. 2022

Dear Reviewer 

The journal of Land

Subject: Submission of revised paper entitled" The Gender Gap in Land Sciences: A Review of Women's Contribution to the Editorial Boards of Peer-reviewed Journals "

 Thank you for your letter and the opportunity to revise our paper on ‘Journal of Land.

Here is a point-by-point response to your comments and concerns.

1. This paper presents a very important topic. The review paper highlights the gap in women’s contributions in Land science journals. The authors assessed the gender composition in editorial boards through a meta-analysis based on a systematic literature review. The authors results support previous findings of a considerable gender difference in Urban land science, geoscience, community, biodiversity conservation, and veterinary sciences. The paper presents the need for the academic community, editors, and journals must take proactive measures to achieve gender balance.

Author response: Thank you for taking the time to review this manuscript; the authors appreciate it.

2. Introduction: The introduction section is well detailed with relevant and up to date literature cited. Check that when abbreviations are used in the first instance in the text they are written in full (see line 46 the term ‘EGU’ Line 110 and 111, check sentence for correct phrasing something is missing….’are both widely accepted… A thorough understanding of this is vital to designing measures that are both widely accepted within the community (Chen and Seto, 2022).

Author response: Thank you for your comments. We revised it.

3. Materials and methods: Section is well written,

Author response: Thank you for your comment.

4. Insert captions for the figure 1

Author response: Thank you for pointing this out. The caption is under the figure.

5. Results: Section is well presented. An overview table would complement the summaries in the section 3.1

Author response: Thank you for your comment.

6. Captions missing for figures 2a, b and 3

Author response: Thank you for pointing this out. The caption is under the figure.

7. Discussion: The discussion is well articulated to detail the results and supported with relevant literature

Author response: Thank you for your comment.

8. Conclusion: is relevant with recommendations

Author response: Thank you for your comment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors have done a nice job revising the paper so it is much easier to follow. However there are still some issues that need to be addressed, particularly around the justification, methods, and discussion. The writing also remains a bit sloppy, but some concerted effort surrounding formatting and language along with editing assistance from the other senior authors on this paper should be able to resolve those issues.

Justification:

In line 71 the authors confirm that there is gender bias in authorshop and editorial boards and cite six (6) studies. Why then is this particularly study needed if it is already well known there is bias. I would like to see the authors better justify the study here otherwise it is not telling us anything new that we do not already know.

Methods:

The methods are not complete as they do not describe how the data were analyzed. The third box in Figure 1 should describe the analyses rather than the software that were used. For example, scraping names is not an analysis but rather a data collection technique and should go in the middle box. The authors can also include the software (Beautiful Soup) if they wish, but listing the software alone provides no information to the reader on what was done.

The authors are also missing a section in the methods explaining the analyses that they completed. Only data collection is discussed, and then the analysis loosely says they visualize the data - yet in the results, there are clearly analyses  (e.g., computation of gender ratios, etc.). All of the analyses need to be presented in the methods so they are not a surprise to the reader in the results. The reader should also not be learning of the analyses for the first time in the results.  

Line 111: Using the term literature review may be confusing for some because it is not a literature review in the familiar sense, rather it is a systematic selection of journals and a meta-analysis of the data on those journals.

Line 133-135: it is unclear what the authors are trying to convey here.

Were findings weighted based on the number of articles published to each journal?

Line 137: Why did the authors select journals focused on regional science when the aim is to analyze journals focused on land science? Please clarify.

Line 151: Please explain how GIS is suited for gender analysis and what tools or spatial analyses in particular were used for this analysis.

Results:

The figures in Fig. 2 are interesting, but difficult to read. I wonder if by using different shading *e.g., darker for male, lighter for female, the authors can reclaim some room to make the journal titles larger by not having to write “male” and “female” over and over?

Line 187: it is not clear how Editorial Board here differs from the prior paragraph which focused on editorial members. Could the authors please define how they are using these different terms?

Line 199: what does 26/99% mean? 

Line 200: what do the authors mean by "see tab"?

Table 1: why are certain text highlighted? What does "Participate percent" mean?

Figure 5: Please explain, either in the figure caption or in the legend, what the red, dashed ellipses indicate. Otherwise, remove them from the figure.

Why were only 5 journals investigated for gender contribution trends? The authors need to explain why they did not use the full set in the paper. Also, this analysis should be introduced and explained in the methods.

Discussion

The discussion still largely repeats what was presented in the results and does not explain what these results mean for the land science community, particularly the women who are publishing in this field. Since there is already loads of research confirming that there are gender biases on editorial boards, it is important that the discussion for this paper strongly links to the land community and discusses the specific impacts on this community. Otherwise, there is very little new contribution from this paper.

Line 284-287: If gender parity is not a realistic expectation, what should the land community expect then? What are realistic expectations given the findings from this paper? Please provide some insights here.

Minor comments:

Line 55: The sentence about ethnic biases is misplaced since this paragraph is supposed to be about gender biases.

Line 101-103: formatting issues

Line 148: formatting issues

Line 156: what do the authors mean by "edits".

Line 159: Not clear what Figure 1 caption is doing here.

Line 164-5: what does it mean for an IF to be less than greater than or equal to 1. ?

Line 165-6: how can an IF be more than and less than or equal to 10?

Line 197: fix sub-heading

Author Response

06 Oct. 2022

Dear Reviewer 

The journal of Land

Subject: Submission of revised paper entitled" The Gender Gap in Land Sciences: A Review of Women's Contribution to the Editorial Boards of Peer-reviewed Journals "

Thank you for your letter and the opportunity to revise our paper on ‘Journal of Land.

Here is a point-by-point response to your comments and concerns.

The authors have done a nice job revising the paper so it is much easier to follow. However, there are still some issues that need to be addressed, particularly around the justification, methods, and discussion. The writing also remains a bit sloppy, but some concerted effort surrounding formatting and language along with editing assistance from the other senior authors on this paper should be able to resolve those issues.

Authors response: Thank you for your comments and feedback. the authors appreciate your time and insightful comments. We revised it.

Justification:

1. In line 71 the authors confirm that there is gender bias in authorship and editorial boards and cite six (6) studies. Why then is this particularly study needed if it is already well known there is bias. I would like to see the authors better justify the study here otherwise it is not telling us anything new that we do not already know.

Authors response: Thank you for pointing this out and thank you also for your concern about novelty of this work. We really appreciate it. All 6 cite is here.

Fox et al., 2016 at six journals of ecology and evolution.

Helmer et al., 2017; Frontiers series of journals,

Manlove & Belou, 2018; in high-impact ecological publications during 2015 and 2016

Topaz & Sen, 2016; in the mathematical sciences

Wehi et al., 2019; Leadership and diversity in the New Zealand Ecological Society

Fox et al., 2019; Editor and reviewer gender influences the peer review process but not peer review outcomes in an ecology journal.  

To our knowledge, the field of "land" has not yet been subjected to such an analysis. We also mentioned it at end of the introduction.

Methods:

2. The methods are not complete as they do not describe how the data were analyzed. The third box in Figure 1 should describe the analyses rather than the software that were used. For example, scraping names is not an analysis but rather a data collection technique and should go in the middlebox. The authors can also include the software (Beautiful Soup) if they wish, but listing the software alone provides no information to the reader on what was done.

Authors response: Thank you for this comment. We revised Fig.1. we move to Publish or Perish software to Journal selection, Beautiful Soup, Geocoder, Nominatim, and Scholarly (which are Python libraries) to the Data section. And Added Panda, Plotly to Analyses.

3. The authors are also missing a section in the methods explaining the analyses that they completed. Only data collection is discussed, and then the analysis loosely says they visualize the data - yet in the results, there are clearly analyses (e.g., computation of gender ratios, etc.). All of the analyses need to be presented in the methods so they are not a surprise to the reader in the results. The reader should also not be learning of the analyses for the first time in the results. 

 Authors response: Thank you for pointing this out. We revised that section.

4. Line 111: Using the term literature review may be confusing for some because it is not a literature review in the familiar sense, rather it is a systematic selection of journals and a meta-analysis of the data on those journals.

Authors response: Thank you for bringing this to our attention. yes, somehow is correct but Actually, the list of journals came from a systematic literature review. We had eight keywords and used them to find published papers, then journal names, and...

Line 133-135: it is unclear what the authors are trying to convey here.

Authors response: Thank you for this comments. we revised it and tried to clarified it.

5. Were findings weighted based on the number of articles published to each journal?

Authors response: Based on how many publications had the study's keywords in them, we chose the list of journals. Journals that have published articles that are less than 30% about the studied keywords, for instance, are not included.

6. Line 137: Why did the authors select journals focused on regional science when the aim is to analyze journals focused on land science? Please clarify

Authors response: Thank you for this comments. we didn't focus on specific journals. as figure 1 shows at first we searched the keywords and extract the papers. then from the papers, we extracted the names of the journals in which those papers were published.

7. Line 151: Please explain how GIS is suited for gender analysis and what tools or spatial analyses in particular were used for this analysis.

Authors response: Good points, I appreciate it. For the geographical distribution of the editorial members in the initial draft of the manuscript, we utilized the Kernel density estimate method, however, one of the reviewers suggested switching to a straightforward categorization approach for Fig 5. This map was produced by GIS.

Results:

8. The figures in Fig. 2 are interesting, but difficult to read. I wonder if by using different shading *e.g., darker for male, lighter for female, the authors can reclaim some room to make the journal titles larger by not having to write “male” and “female” over and over?

Authors response: Yes, unfortunately, it is. We used the Plotly library in Python to plot this figure. Unfortunately, there is no option to change the radius of each sector (based on a search in the manual and Google). On the other hand, we prepared Table 1, which contains the distribution of gender for each journal per percentage.

9. Line 187: it is not clear how Editorial Board here differs from the prior paragraph which focused on editorial members. Could the authors please define how they are using these different terms?

Authors response: Thank you for this point. We revised it.

10. Line 199: what does 26/99% mean?

 Authors response: Thank you also for this point. We revised it.

11. Line 200: what do the authors mean by "see tab"?

Authors response: Thank you for this point. We revised it.

12. Table 1: why are certain text highlighted? What does "Participate percent" mean?

Authors response: we revised the Tab 1. The percentages of male and female presence on editorial boards are expressed as "participate percent."

13. Figure 5: Please explain, either in the figure caption or in the legend, what the red, dashed ellipses indicate. Otherwise, remove them from the figure.

Authors response: Thank you also for this point. We removed it.

14. Why were only 5 journals investigated for gender contribution trends? The authors need to explain why they did not use the full set in the paper. Also, this analysis should be introduced and explained in the methods.

Authors response: Thank you for pointing this out. Unfortunately, we were unable to access the journal's editorial board members' time series data; as a result, we were only able to access 5 journal data through email exchanges (We sent emails to all journal offices). We motioned it in Research limitation.

Discussion

15. The discussion still largely repeats what was presented in the results and does not explain what these results mean for the land science community, particularly the women who are publishing in this field. Since there is already loads of research confirming that there are gender biases on editorial boards, it is important that the discussion for this paper strongly links to the land community and discusses the specific impacts on this community. Otherwise, there is very little new contribution from this paper.

Authors response: Thank you for pointing this out. We revised the discussion. In the first 2 paragraphs, we explained the results. In the next paragraphs, we discussed them. This paper is just a review paper for a special issue and the aim was to bring out gender participation in Land science journals.

16. Line 284-287: If gender parity is not a realistic expectation, what should the land community expect then? What are realistic expectations given the findings from this paper? Please provide some insights here.

Authors response: Thank you for pointing this out. We agree with you. That's why we mentioned the leaky pipeline that equality should begin at the very beginning. Also, we mentioned in the introduction that examining the editorial board members is just one method or dimension for examining the gap.

Minor comments:

17. Line 55: The sentence about ethnic biases is misplaced since this paragraph is supposed to be about gender biases.

Authors response: Thank you for your comments. We removed it.

18. Line 101-103: formatting issues

Authors response: Thank you we revised it.

19. Line 148: formatting issues

Authors response: We edited it. 

20. Line 156: what do the authors mean by "edits"?

Authors response: We edited it.  

21. Line 159: Not clear what Figure 1 caption is doing here.

Authors response: Thank you for this comments, we removed it.

22. Line 164-5: what does it mean for an IF to be less than greater than or equal to 1.?

Authors response: Thank you for pointing this out. the journal's IF was between 0 - 10.21. so we classified it for better visualization. Appendix 1

23. Line 165-6: how can an IF be more than and less than or equal to 10?

Authors response: Thank you for pointing this out. the journal's IF was between 0 - 10.21. so we classified it for better visualization. Appendix 1

24. Line 197: fix sub-heading

Authors response: Thank you for your comment. We revised it.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This version of the manuscript is much improved from the previous submission. Few things to improve the professionalism of the document.

Please re-read the manuscript carefully.

Title: should be presence on boards not "presence to"

Line 61: It is leaky not leaking. Please edit the sentence so the English is concise.

"A common metaphor for the  underrepresentation of women in science and STEM fields is the "leaky pipeline." Please have a citation for this term: perhaps this -----

https://www.graduate.umaryland.edu/gsa/gazette/February-2015/The-Leaky-Pipeline-Women-in-Life-Sciences/#:~:text=The%20%22leaky%20pipeline%22%20metaphor%20describes,to%20major%20in%20these%20fields.

Please make the font smaller in the tables" 10 or 11 point font so that the complete journal title is there -- for example in Table 1 (not Tab 1. --please spell out table) Progress in Human Geography (add the 'in'). Studies 'in the' History 'of' Gardens Designed Landscapes.  Please respect the publications by using the full title and please reduce the font size to do so

What is this journal #6 "geography natural"? I can't find it through a Google search.

Journal #12 in Table 1 is Land -- please capitalize.  Please take some extra time and care and pay attention to these small issues pertaining to grammar, punctuation etc.  It makes the manuscript more readable and reflects favorably on the credibility of the authors and the journal editors.

Line 203 -- As the tables 1 shows should be "As Table 1 shows" -- these are the small issues that I ask the authors to correct 

Line 250:  does gender imbalance have any effect on tenure and promotion of women scholars?  Being on a board is about the publication of research is it not important for research at all. It is important for the dissemination of results.  Please be careful about your claims.

Lines 251-253: gender diversity among editors is important for research because it  HIGHLIGHTS gender inequalities and can shed light on the causes and effects of  inequality in the publishing industry (Fox et al., 2019).  How does it shed light on the causes and effects of inequality? All these percentages do is show that inequality exists -- these percentages tell us nothing about why the inequality exists so this claim in linea 253-254 is not supported. Please remove or argue how these percentage are evidence of the causes of inequality.

Lines 279-281:  Interestingly, the average percentage of female edi- 279 tors-in-chief, the most prestigious and influential position within the journals, is quite close to the percentage of female editorial board members in the last year of our study. Why is this interesting?  Please do not start a sentence with 'interestingly' or 'surprisingly' unless you explicit tell the reader why it is interesting or surprising.

Line 322:  I like this figure on the top of page 11.  I think a subheading is warranted to really bring this to the readers' attention. Perhaps Line 318 should be a sub-heading in bold: Recommendations. Once you get to the end of Line 318 the discussion section is over so signal this important transition in the paper. 

Lines 326 through 340 should be folded into the conclusion. Recommendations is a stand alone section just before conclusions which should now be 6.

Author Response

6 Oct. 2022

Dear Reviewer 

The journal of Land

Subject: Submission of revised paper entitled" The Gender Gap in Land Sciences: A Review of Women's Contribution to the Editorial Boards of Peer-reviewed Journals "

Thank you for your letter and the opportunity to revise our paper on ‘Journal of Land.

Here is a point-by-point response to your comments and concerns.

1. This version of the manuscript is much improved from the previous submission. Few things to improve the professionalism of the document.

Authors response: Thank you for your comments and feedback. the authors appreciate your time and insightful comments.

2. Please re-read the manuscript carefully.

Authors response: Thank you. We revised all comments and edited it.

3. Title: should be presence on boards not "presence to"

Authors response: Thank you for your comment. We revised it.

4. Line 61: It is leaky not leaking. Please edit the sentence so the English is concise.

Authors response: We revised it. Thank you for your comment.

5. "A common metaphor for the underrepresentation of women in science and STEM fields is the "leaky pipeline." Please have a citation for this term: perhaps this -----

https://www.graduate.umaryland.edu/gsa/gazette/February-2015/The-Leaky-Pipeline-Women-in-LifeSciences/#:~:text=The%20%22leaky%20pipeline%22%20metaphor%20describes,to%20major%20in%20these%20fields.

Authors response: thank you for your suggestion. We edited it and add reference.

6. Please make the font smaller in the tables" 10 or 11-point font so that the complete journal title is there -- for example in Table 1 (not Tab 1. --please spell out table) Progress in Human Geography (add the 'in'). Studies 'in the History 'of' Gardens Designed Landscapes.  Please respect the publications by using the full title and please reduce the font size to do so

Authors response:  Thank you for pointing this out. We revised the table and all journals name.

7. What is this journal #6 "geography natural"? I can't find it through a Google search

Authors response: we revised it. Thank you.

8. Journal #12 in Table 1 is Land -- please capitalize.  Please take some extra time and care and pay attention to these small issues pertaining to grammar, punctuation, etc.  It makes the manuscript more readable and reflects favorably on the credibility of the authors and the journal editors.

Authors response: We are agreeing and revised it. Thank you

9. Line 203 -- As the tables, 1 shows should be "As Table 1 shows" -- these are the small issues that I ask the authors to correct 

Authors response: Thank you for your comment. We revised the manuscript through English editing.

10. Line 250:  does gender imbalance have any effect on the tenure and promotion of women scholars?  Being on a board is about the publication of researchis it not important for research at all. It is important for the dissemination of results.  Please be careful about your claims.

Authors response: Thank you for pointing this out. We are agreeing and removed the paragraphs.

11. Lines 251-253: gender diversity among editors is important for research because it HIGHLIGHTS gender inequalities and can shed light on the causes and effects of inequality in the publishing industry (Fox et al., 2019).  How does it shed light on the causes and effects of inequality? All these percentages do is show that inequality exists -- these percentages tell us nothing about why the inequality exists so this claim in line 253-254 is not supported. Please remove or argue how these percentages are evidence of the causes of inequality.

Authors response: Thank you for pointing this out. We are agreeing and removed the paragraphs.

12. Lines 279-281:  Interestingly, the average percentage of female edi- 279 tors-in-chief, the most prestigious and influential position within the journals, is quite close to the percentage of female editorial board members in the last year of our study. Why is this interesting? Please do not start a sentence with 'interestingly' or 'surprisingly' unless you explicit tell the reader why it is interesting or surprising.

Authors response: Thank toy for pointing this out. We revised it.

13. Line 322:  I like this figure on the top of page 11.  I think a subheading is warranted to really bring this to the readers' attention. Perhaps Line 318 should be a sub-heading in bold:Once you get to the end of Line 318 the discussion section is over so signal this important transition in the paper. 

Authors response: Thank you for your suggestion. We revised it according your suggestion.

14. Lines 326 through 340 should be folded into the conclusion. Recommendations is a stand alone section just before conclusions which should now be 6.

Authors response: Thank you for pointing this out. We revised it

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf