Presence Is Not Parity, Visibility Is Not Credit: Gendered Hierarchies in Platform- Based Academic Publishing

Presence Is Not Parity, Visibility Is Not Credit: Gendered Hierarchies in Platform- Based Academic Publishing | Research Square window.SnipcartSettings = { analytics: { enabled: false } }; (function() { var accessVector = localStorage.getItem('access_vector') || ''; window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; if (accessVector) { window.dataLayer.push({ user: { profile: { profileInfo: { snid: accessVector } } } }); } })(); (function(w,d,s,l,i){w[l]=w[l]||[];w[l].push({'gtm.start':new Date().getTime(),event:'gtm.js'});var f=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],j=d.createElement(s),dl=l!='dataLayer'?'&l='+l:'';j.async=true;j.src='https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id='+i+dl;f.parentNode.insertBefore(j,f);})(window,document,'script','dataLayer','GTM-K279D39R'); Browse Preprints In Review Journals COVID-19 Preprints AJE Video Bytes Research Tools Research Promotion AJE Professional Editing AJE Rubriq About Preprint Platform In Review Editorial Policies Our Team Advisory Board Help Center Sign In Submit a Preprint Cite Share Download PDF Research Article Presence Is Not Parity, Visibility Is Not Credit: Gendered Hierarchies in Platform- Based Academic Publishing Kemal Yayla, Şehnaz Ceylan This is a preprint; it has not been peer reviewed by a journal. https://doi.org/ 10.21203/rs.3.rs-9152762/v1 This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License Status: Posted Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Abstract Editorial board research has consistently documented women's underrepresentation in journal leadership, but most studies measure representation through aggregate board composition or editor-in-chief counts alone. This approach conflates participation with stratification: if roles carrying different levels of authority are pooled into a single indicator, opposing distributional patterns can cancel each other out, producing a misleading appearance of parity. This study examines how editorial roles are distributed by gender across a national platform-based journal system. Analyzing 38,241 person–journal observations from 1,549 DergiPark journals, we estimate logistic and proportional-odds regression models to distinguish four role categories—executive, operational, support, and symbolic—and report average marginal effects with individual-level cluster-robust standard errors. Women are significantly less likely to hold executive editorial positions (OR = 0.583, AME = −1.63 pp) and more likely to occupy operational (OR = 1.090, AME = +1.78 pp) and support roles (OR = 1.151, AME = +0.88 pp), conditional on academic rank, disciplinary context, and institutional visibility. When these roles are aggregated into a single gatekeeping indicator, the gender coefficient becomes non-significant—not because stratification is absent, but because opposing effects cancel each other out. Role-disaggregated analysis is therefore a necessary condition for valid inference about editorial gender equity in role-differentiated settings. The findings also demonstrate that platform-standardized editorial metadata enables role-level comparisons that fragmented publisher environments cannot support. gender inequality editorial boards role stratification invisible labor platform-based scholarly publishing Dergipark Introduction Academic life increasingly emphasizes measurable research outputs. In many national systems, publication has shifted from being just one of many professional activities to becoming the primary measure for evaluation, reward, and career advancement (Şener et al., 2025). Comparative studies of institutional review, promotion, and tenure policies show that journal-based output indicators—such as publication counts, citation metrics, and journal prestige—now serve as the main indicators of quality in faculty assessments across different countries (Pontika et al., 2022; Van Dalen and Henkens, 2012). This focus on output has a structural impact that is less often studied. As journal metrics become the primary means of academic recognition, the journals that produce them gain institutional importance beyond simply sharing research. They act as gatekeepers, facilitating the construction and dissemination of scholarly reputation. Such activity makes the work arrangements behind journal governance—who decides what is published, who manages the process, and who maintains the workflow—a significant subject for study in its own right (Picano, 2026). One essential aspect of that infrastructure is editorial work (Vuong, 2022). Scientific journals rely on a distributed editorial structure that includes not only editors-in-chief but also associate editors, section editors, managing editors, language editors, statistical editors, field editors, and various advisory roles. These roles are not interchangeable. They vary in decision-making power, visibility, routine workload, and closeness to gatekeeping authority. Moher et al. (2017) emphasize this point from a competency perspective: editorial work is a structured activity with specific responsibilities rather than a single, undifferentiated title. For this reason alone, the category of "editorial board member" is analytically unstable. Labeling editorial participation as a flat institutional role hides the fact that editorial governance is internally layered. That distinction is important because the modern publication system tends to reward visible outputs while often overlooking the types of labor that support and maintain the process itself. Some editorial roles are highly visible and closely linked to authority, reputation, and influence; others are more routine, maintenance tasks, and organizationally essential but less likely to earn the scholarly recognition that institutional evaluation systems value. This imbalance between visible academic status and less visible supporting work is not accidental. Weisshaar (2017), examining gender gaps in promotion to tenure, shows that overall career results can look similar across groups even if organizational efforts and recognition are distributed unevenly — a conclusion that relies entirely on going beyond summary statistics to understand how mechanisms produce these results. The same applies to editorial governance: simply knowing women are on journal boards says little about how editorial labor, authority, and recognition are distributed within the role structure. Summary metrics can hide the very differences that matter most. Extensive research has already demonstrated the ongoing underrepresentation of women in editorial leadership across various fields. Management and business journals (Metz and Harzing, 2012, 2009), mathematics (Topaz and Sen, 2016), and accounting (Dhanani and Jones, 2017) have documented this trend. Multidisciplinary analyses covering authorship and board makeup (Mauleón et al., 2013) as well as discipline-specific studies in psychology and neuroscience (Palser et al., 2022) highlight the same pattern, along with broader commentary framing academic publishing as a gendered system where seemingly impartial processes perpetuate unequal access to influence and recognition (Lundine et al., 2018). Together, these studies strongly indicate that editorial representation is unequal. However, they also point out a recurring limitation: most measures of inequality focus on overall board composition, the editor-in-chief position alone, or only very broad distinctions between senior and non-senior roles. That is where literature becomes less clear than it seems. Knowing that women are generally underrepresented doesn't tell us how they are distributed across editorial roles. A journal may appear relatively balanced overall yet still concentrate men in executive gatekeeping roles and women in coordinating, support, or maintenance positions. Conversely, an increase in women's overall board presence might reflect growth in lower-authority roles rather than a real redistribution of formal power. This is an important methodological detail. It distinguishes between measuring participation and measuring stratification. If roles with different authority levels are combined into a single indicator, opposite patterns can cancel each other out. The result is a misleading impression of parity—or a null result that reflects aggregation rather than true equality. A smaller but significant subset of studies highlights this more profound issue by going beyond simple headcounts. Fox et al. (2019) demonstrate that editorial composition can influence peer-review dynamics, indicating that board structure is not just symbolic but impacts how scholarship is assessed. Liu et al. (2023) similarly show that editorial inequality is connected to broader patterns of status concentration and self-publication, reinforcing the idea that editorial roles are part of unequal scholarly power relations. These studies are important because they shift the discussion from mere presence to actual consequences. However, even this more advanced research rarely disaggregates editorial work to distinguish between executive authority, operational coordination, support tasks, and symbolic roles. The ways gender inequality are organized within editorial structures—rather than just across them—remain largely underexplored. This gap is especially consequential considering what controlled empirical designs can reveal. Weisshaar (2017) shows that when promotion outcomes are examined at sufficient resolution—disaggregating by career stage, institutional type, and field rather than relying on aggregate rates—patterns that appear gender-neutral at the surface level can reveal systematic asymmetries in how equivalent performances are rewarded for men and women. The methodological lesson is general: aggregate outcomes do not transparently reveal underlying mechanisms, and the choice of units of analysis is not a technical detail but a substantive one. Applied to editorial governance, the relevant question is not simply whether women are present on journal boards, but where they are situated within the editorial division of labor and what authority those positions confer. Once that question is asked, the standard board-composition model begins to look conceptually blunt. Presence on a board is not equivalent to parity of influence if the roles constituting that presence differ systematically in decision authority, workload visibility, and formal decision authority. This study addresses this gap by analyzing how editorial roles are divided within a national platform-based journal system, where role assignments are more consistent than in the fragmented publishing environments that much of the previous research depends on. A common challenge in researching editorial boards is that role titles differ greatly across journals and publishers, making cross-journal comparisons difficult and leading researchers to lump different functions into broad categories. A platform-based system minimizes that confusion by grounding role comparisons in a shared operational framework rather than journal-specific traditions, making it easier to analyze role distinctions on a large scale. This enables us to move beyond simply questioning whether women are represented to a more precise inquiry into how editorial responsibilities are allocated across various role types. This study addresses these gaps through three research questions. RQ1: Are women and men distributed differently across executive editorial roles when academic rank, institutional visibility, and disciplinary context are held constant? RQ2: Do gender differences in role occupancy extend beyond the executive level — specifically to operational and support roles that sustain the editorial workflow without carrying gatekeeping authority? RQ3: Does aggregating across role categories, as is common in prior editorial board research, produce a misleading indicator of gender equity by cancelling opposing role-specific effects? This article contends that aggregate editorial board metrics can misrepresent gender equity in settings with role-based differences. It examines whether women and men are evenly distributed across editorial roles or if overall parity hides a more layered internal structure. By analyzing executive, operational, support, and symbolic roles, the study clarifies why headcounts at the board level alone are inadequate for accurate conclusions about editorial gender equity. Its contributions are threefold: first, it shifts the focus from overall presence to role-specific distribution in addressing board inequality; second, it highlights the importance of platform-standardized metadata for studying editorial governance; and third, it offers empirical evidence that representation and authority should be viewed as separate categories in analyses of scholarly publishing. Methods and Data Data Source DergiPark is a national academic journal hosting platform operated by TÜBİTAK-ULAKBİM, the scientific and technological research council of Türkiye. Established in 2013 and migrated from Open Journal Systems (OJS) to a domestically developed journal management infrastructure (UDS) in 2017 (DergiPark, n.d.), DergiPark provides hosting, editorial workflow management, and digital object identifier (DOI) assignment services free of charge to all member journals(Aslan, 2019; Tamer et al., 2020) . As of January 2026, the platform houses virtually the entire landscape of Turkish academic journal publishing, encompassing more than 2,900 journals across all scientific fields. The platform constitutes an analytically privileged research setting for two reasons. First, its national scope allows the complete editorial labor ecosystem of a country's academic publishing to be captured within a single data infrastructure, rather than through convenience sampling from international databases (Pölönen, Guns, et al., 2021). Second, and more critically, DergiPark's UDS architecture standardizes editorial workflow regardless of disciplinary context. Role assignments are operationalized as system permission sets rather than journal-defined labels: a journal in nursing studies and a journal in econometrics follow identical submission, assignment, review, and publication workflows within the same platform. This structural standardization reduces a longstanding methodological problem in editorial board research — the non-equivalence of role titles across publishers and journals — by grounding role comparisons in operational function rather than nomenclature. National platforms operating under comparable architectures, such as Finland's Journal.fi (Pölönen, Syrjämäki, et al., 2021) and Sweden's Publicera (Publicera, 2022), demonstrate that this model is not unique to Turkey; DergiPark nonetheless represents its most comprehensive instantiation in terms of scale and coverage. Data collection was conducted in December 2025 through dual-source web scraping: editorial board compositions were harvested from each journal's public webpage, and individual editorial profiles were simultaneously retrieved from DergiPark's standardized profile pages. The final dataset comprises 38,241 person–journal observations corresponding to 29,927 unique individuals across 1,549 journals. Role Typology A central challenge in editorial board research is the heterogeneity of role labels across journals. Web-facing titles such as 'Dil Editörü' (Language Editor), 'Baş Editör' (Editor-in-Chief), and 'Alan Editörleri' (Section Editors) reflect journal-level conventions rather than operationally distinct functions. To address this, we developed a systematic role thesaurus mapping raw web-scraped labels to standardized role families through a multi-pass procedure combining regular expression matching, heuristic rules, fuzzy matching, and manual annotation. The thesaurus covers 2,698 unique raw label variants in Turkish and English. The mapping process was guided by a hierarchical decision protocol: it started with regular expression matching, then used heuristic rules for known variation forms, employed fuzzy string matching for near-duplicates, and included manual annotation for ambiguous cases. Each decision level is recorded in the thesaurus, allowing retrospective review of any individual mapping decision. Labels at the operational-support boundary—including 'Statistics Editor,' 'Ethics Editor,' and 'Publication Coordinator'—underwent explicit manual review and are marked in the thesaurus. Standardized role families then collapsed into a four-category analytical typology based on the locus of editorial authority and the visibility of the associated labor within the academic reward system (Table 1). This typology was derived from the operational logic of DergiPark's UDS permission architecture, validated against the scraped profile data, and informed by prior conceptualizations of editorial role stratification (Grod et al., 2010; Memon et al., 2022). Table 1. Four-category editorial role typology. Category Power Level Example Labels (DergiPark) Operational Description Executive High Baş Editör, Editor-in-Chief, Managing Editor Final editorial decision authority: appoints reviewers and accepts/rejects manuscripts Operational Medium Alan Editörü, Editör Yardımcısı, Associate Editor, Section Editor Day-to-day workflow management; reviewer coordination; gatekeeping without final authority Support Low/None Dil Editörü, Mizanpaj Editörü, İstatistik Editörü, Sekreterya Technical and linguistic processing; backstage labor enabling publication without gatekeeping power Symbolic/Board Symbolic Yayın Kurulu, Danışma Kurulu, Editorial Board, Advisory Board Reputational endorsement; rarely involved in manuscript-level decisions Where an individual held multiple roles within the same journal, the most senior role was retained (ceiling rule), following the hierarchy executive > operational > support > symbolic. This decision produces conservative estimates of operational absorption: individuals simultaneously listed as both board member and section editor are classified as operational, understating the extent to which women accumulate roles across the hierarchy. Reported operational and support estimates should therefore be interpreted as lower bounds. Gender Classification Gender was inferred from given names using GenderAPI[1]'s country-contextual classifier, applied with Turkey (TR) as the country parameter. Turkish given names are strongly sex-differentiated, resulting in high classification accuracy for this corpus. Predictions were retained only when gender_confidence ≥ 0.60 (medium or high confidence tier). Observations falling below this threshold or classified as 'unknown' were assigned gender_for_analysis = NaN and excluded from inferential analyses. Table 2 details exclusion criteria and counts. Table 2. Gender classification exclusion criteria. Exclusion Criterion n Rationale Empty first name 13 GenderAPI call not possible; no gender_pred assigned Unknown gender 413 Name absent from GenderAPI database; confidence threshold unmet Low confidence tier 613 gender_confidence < 0.60; prediction unreliable (gender-neutral or rare names) Deniz anomaly 114 GenderAPI (TR context) coded all 114 instances as female; expected ~50/50 distribution; systematic bias excluded One systematic classifier artefact was identified and addressed: observations bearing the given name 'Deniz' (n = 114) were excluded from the main analysis due to a documented bias in the Turkish-context classifier and are available as a separate robustness check[2]. Covariates Academic title was extracted from editorial profile pages and harmonized into four levels: full professor, associate professor, assistant professor, and other/unlisted. Where the same individual held different titles across journals, the most senior title was used. ORCID presence was coded as a binary indicator of institutional visibility and integration into international scholarly infrastructure. Affiliation country was used to construct a binary indicator distinguishing Turkish-based from internationally affiliated individuals. Disciplinary classification was performed by linking journals to OpenAlex through ISSN matching. Topic distributions from OpenAlex were aggregated to derive a dominant disciplinary category for each journal, yielding five categories: Social Sciences (n = 670), Mixed/Interdisciplinary (n = 829), STEM (n = 310), Health/Medicine (n = 202), and Arts & Humanities (n = 164). Journals without a reliable OpenAlex match (n = 60) were excluded from discipline-stratified analyses. Journal institutionalization was captured through a five-tier variable based on journal age: new (0–5 years), emerging (6–10 years), established (11–20 years), institutionalized (21–39 years), and legacy (40+ years). A discipline-level female ratio — the proportion of female editorial board members within each disciplinary category across the full dataset — was also computed as a contextual control for field-level gender composition. Analytical Strategy We estimated the probability of holding each role category as a function of gender, conditional on academic title, ORCID presence, affiliation country, journal institutionalization, and disciplinary context. All models include gender × discipline interaction terms, except for the support role model (Model 1c), which tests a gender × academic title interaction to examine whether rank moderates the gender–support role association. Table 3 summarizes the five models estimated; full model specifications in LaTeX notation and implementation details are provided in Appendix A and Appendix B respectively. Table 3. Analytical models. Model Outcome Estimator Notes 1a EIC / executive Firth penalized logistic regression; profile likelihood confidence intervals Interaction: gender × disciplinary field. Academic title entered in collapsed four-level form to mitigate quasi-complete separation in this rare outcome. See Appendix B. 1b Operational Logistic regression with individual-level cluster-robust standard errors Interaction: gender × disciplinary field. 1c Support Logistic regression with individual-level cluster-robust standard errors Interaction: gender × academic title — tests whether rank moderates the gender–support role association. 1d Broad gatekeeping (executive + operational) Logistic regression with individual-level cluster-robust standard errors Interaction: gender × disciplinary field. Sensitivity model replicating aggregated-outcome approach common in prior literature. 2 Ordered role hierarchy Proportional odds (cumulative logit) model; Wald confidence intervals No interaction. Proportional odds assumption assessed via likelihood ratio test against fully unconstrained model. See Appendix B. Standard errors for Models 1b–1d are clustered at the individual level to account for within-person correlation arising from individuals appearing on multiple journals. Where a DergiPark person identifier was available, it served as the cluster unit; otherwise, the individual's profile URL was used. This hierarchy ensures that individuals who hold roles across multiple journals are treated as a single cluster rather than independent observations. Average marginal effects (AME) are reported for the gender coefficient in all models to enable comparison of effect magnitudes on a common probability scale. For the executive role model (Model 1a), estimated using Firth's penalised likelihood rather than standard maximum likelihood, AMEs were computed using the model's own variance estimates rather than the cluster-robust matrix applied to the other models; the resulting standard error should be interpreted conservatively. For Models 1b–1d, AMEs were computed with the same cluster-robust covariance matrix used in the coefficient tests. Technical details of all AME computations are provided in Appendix B. Model 2 tests whether gender is associated with position in the full role hierarchy, treating the four categories as an ordered outcome: support < symbolic < operational < executive. Symbolic board membership is positioned above support roles in this ordering because board appointments carry a reputational threshold not required for technical support functions. The proportional odds assumption underlying this model was assessed by a likelihood ratio test against a fully unconstrained alternative; results are reported in Appendix B. All analyses were conducted in R (v4.4.x). Full replication code, including annotated scripts for all five models, is available at OSF (https://osf.io/sxmyb/overview?view_only=527f5172d57a4004bab5b39f5caf0e0f). [1]genderapi.io [2]GenderAPI assigned female to all 114 instances of 'Deniz' in this corpus. Population-level evidence indicates that Deniz is distributed approximately equally across sexes in Turkey; the unanimity reflects a database artefact. Robustness analyses comparing Deniz-included and Deniz-excluded specifications are reported in the supplementary materials. Results The analytical dataset comprises 38,241 person–journal observations across 1,549 journals and 29,927 unique individuals. Women constitute 34.4% of the editorial workforce overall. Turkish-affiliated individuals account for 91.1% of observations, and 54.1% of individuals have a registered ORCID identifier. Role category distribution across the full sample reflects the structural weight of non-executive positions: executive roles account for 3.4% of observations, operational roles for 33.4%, support roles for 8.5%, and symbolic/board roles for the remaining 54.7%. Women's overall representation at 34.4% therefore masks divergent distributions within each role category, which the models below disaggregate. Disciplinary composition: Mixed/Interdisciplinary journals constitute the largest group (829, 53.5%), followed by Social Sciences (670, 43.3%), STEM (310, 20.0%), Health/Medicine (202, 13.0%), and Arts & Humanities (164, 10.6%). Journals span five institutionalization tiers: emerging (823, 53.1%), established (701, 45.3%), institutionalized (290, 18.7%), new (249, 16.1%), and legacy (172, 11.1%). Model 1a estimates the probability of holding an editor-in-chief or managing editor position. Women are significantly less likely than men of equivalent academic rank, ORCID status, and disciplinary context to hold executive editorial roles (OR = 0.583, 95% CI [0.510, 0.664], p < .001). The average marginal effect indicates a difference of −1.63 percentage points in the probability of executive role occupancy (AME = −0.0163, SE = 0.0018). Given the baseline EIC rate of 3.4%, this corresponds to a relative deficit of approximately 48% relative to the male baseline. As noted in Section 3.5, the Model 1a AME standard error is not cluster-corrected. ORCID presence is associated with a substantially higher probability of executive appointment (OR = 1.541, p < .001), consistent with ORCID functioning as a proxy for institutional visibility. Academic title follows a monotonic positive gradient: professor-rank individuals are considerably more likely to hold EIC positions than the other_academic reference category. A significant gender × discipline interaction emerged for Mixed/Interdisciplinary journals (OR = 1.823, p = .040), indicating that the executive gender gap is attenuated in interdisciplinary contexts relative to single-discipline journals. This interaction does not fully offset the main gender effect: the net probability of women holding executive roles in Mixed/Interdisciplinary journals remains below the male baseline. Model 1b estimates the probability of holding an operational role. Women are more likely than men to occupy operational positions (OR = 1.090, AME = +1.78 pp, SE = 0.0052, p < .001). Academic title is inversely associated with operational role probability at the highest ranks: professors (OR = 0.414) are substantially less likely to hold operational roles than the other_academic reference category, whereas assistant professors (Dr. Öğretim Üyesi, OR = 1.531) are more likely. A significant gender × STEM interaction (OR = 0.718, p = .005) indicates that the female advantage in operational roles is approximately 28% smaller in STEM journals than in the Social Sciences reference category. Model 1c extends this pattern to support roles. Women are again significantly more likely to hold support positions than men of equivalent rank (OR = 1.151, AME = +0.88 pp, SE = 0.0028, p = .002). The title gradient is pronounced: full professors (OR = 0.018) and associate professors (OR = 0.045) are nearly completely absent from support roles. Model 1c tested a gender × title interaction to examine whether the female support role elevation might be an artefact of women's concentration in lower academic ranks; no significant moderation was detected. The gender effect therefore holds conditional on rank, indicating that women's elevated support role probability is not driven by title composition alone. Table 4. Average marginal effects of gender (female = 1) on editorial role occupancy. Model Outcome AME 95% CI OR p 1a EIC (executive) −1.63 pp [−1.98, −1.28]† 0.583 < .001 1b Operational +1.78 pp [+0.76, +2.80] 1.090 < .001 1c Support +0.88 pp [+0.33, +1.43] 1.151 .002 1d Broad gatekeeping +0.49 pp [−0.55, +1.53] 1.023 .361 AME expressed in percentage points. CIs computed from cluster-robust standard errors (HC1) for Models 1b–1d; † Model 1a AME uses model-default SE (vcov = NULL; not cluster-corrected — see Section 3.5). Profile likelihood CIs reported for Model 1a coefficients. OR = odds ratio from the corresponding logistic model. All models condition on academic title, ORCID presence, affiliation country, disciplinary category, and institutionalisation tier. Model 1d combines executive and operational roles into a single broad gatekeeping outcome. Under this specification, the gender coefficient is not statistically significant (OR = 1.023, AME = +0.49 pp, p = .361). The directional reversal relative to Model 1a arises because the positive female effect in operational roles (Model 1b) numerically offsets the negative executive-level effect when the two are pooled, demonstrating that aggregated-outcome analyses can conceal structurally distinct mechanisms operating in opposite directions. Model 2, a proportional odds model, tests whether gender is associated with position in the full ordered role hierarchy (support < symbolic < operational < executive). The gender coefficient is non-significant (OR = 0.974, p = .214). A likelihood ratio test against a fully unconstrained non-parallel model (VGAM::vglm) confirmed that the proportional odds assumption holds for gender (χ² = 4.12, df = 3, p = .249); the null result therefore reflects genuine cancellation of opposing role-specific effects rather than an artefact of the proportionality constraint. The symbolic|operational threshold in Model 2 carries a notably large odds ratio (OR = 14.5), confirming that holding any active editorial role (operational or above) is substantially less probable than holding merely a symbolic board membership. This threshold is consistent across gender, indicating that board membership functions as a structurally distinct stratum rather than as the base of a continuous hierarchy. Gender × STEM interactions are significant in both the operational model (OR = 0.718, p = .005) and the broad gatekeeping model (OR = 0.752, p = .013), and directionally consistent. In STEM journals, the female advantage in operational role probability is reduced by approximately 22–28% relative to the Social Sciences baseline. No significant gender × discipline interactions were detected for Health/Medicine, Arts & Humanities, or Legacy journals in these models. In the EIC model (Model 1a), the significant interaction for Mixed/Interdisciplinary journals (OR = 1.823, p = .040) represents a partial moderation of the executive gender gap in interdisciplinary contexts. As noted above, this interaction does not fully offset the main gender effect. ORCID presence is a consistent positive predictor of senior role occupancy across all models, with odds ratios ranging from 1.318 (Model 2) to 1.541 (Model 1a). Academic title effects are consistent with role stratification expectations: full professors concentrate in executive roles and are near-absent from support functions, while lower title categories are associated with operational and support positions. The Turkish affiliation indicator (aff_country_TR) is not a significant predictor in any model after conditioning on the remaining covariates, indicating that the observed role–gender associations are not driven by the compositional dominance of domestically affiliated individuals in the sample. Discussion Addressing RQ1, the results are consistent with two simultaneous mechanisms. Women are significantly less likely to hold executive editorial roles—editor-in-chief and managing editor positions that carry final decision-making authority over manuscripts (OR = 0.583, AME = − 1.63 pp). At the same time, women are more likely than men of equivalent academic rank to occupy operational roles that manage the editorial workflow (OR = 1.090, AME = + 1.78 pp) and support roles that provide the technical and linguistic services enabling publication (OR = 1.151, AME = + 0.88 pp). These effects are not artifacts of women's lower representation in senior academic ranks: both persist after conditioning on academic title, and the gender × title interaction in the support model is non-significant. This pattern shifts the interpretive focus from simple underrepresentation to the gendered distribution of editorial labor—and, in doing so, connects to a broader set of theoretical arguments about how organizations allocate sustaining work. Much of what sustains an institution never appears in its official account of itself. In her analysis of invisible work, Daniels (1987) argued that a wide range of activities—coordinating logistics, managing interpersonal relations, and maintaining the conditions under which visible, credited work can take place—falls outside the folk conception of work precisely because it is not remunerated, not publicly recognized, and not associated with the autonomous production of valued output. The devaluation of this sustaining work, Daniels (1987) showed, is inseparable from its gendering: activities performed predominantly by women come to be seen as expressions of natural aptitude rather than as skilled, effortful labor deserving recognition. We invoke this framework not to claim that editorial work is structurally equivalent to the domestic and volunteer labor Daniels (1987) analyzed, but rather because it offers an analytic analogy that illuminates a parallel dynamic in the organization of journal production. The editorial process is visible when it produces a published article and an authoritative decision; it is invisible when it involves coordinating reviewers, copyediting manuscripts, managing submission systems, and providing the administrative continuity without which publication decisions could not be routinely sustained. This study asks who performs which kind of editorial work—and finds that the answer is structured by gender. Executive Segregation and Operational Absorption The executive gender gap documented here—women are approximately 42% less likely than men with similar credentials to hold editor-in-chief or managing editor roles—aligns with findings from extensive research on editorial boards across various fields. Studies in medical journals consistently show that women are underrepresented in top editorial positions, even though their presence on advisory and associate boards is growing (Pinho-Gomes et al., 2021). Research in communication and journalism journals indicates that gender stratification persists at the highest levels of editorial hierarchies (Goyanes and de-Marcos, 2020). Similarly, business and management publishing also displays these patterns (Metz and Harzing, 2009). This study broadens this cross-disciplinary trend to the national publishing infrastructure of a middle-income country, with a comprehensive set of controls that account for academic rank, institutional visibility, disciplinary context, and journal institutionalization. Addressing RQ2, what the executive gap alone cannot explain is the direction of operational and support effects. In our findings, women are more likely to hold operational roles that coordinate submission workflows and reviewer assignments, as well as support roles involving copyediting, language processing, statistical review, and secretarial functions. Acker's (1990) analysis of gendered organizations provides the most direct theoretical insight here. Acker argued that organizations present themselves as gender-neutral systems of abstract jobs and hierarchy. Still, this perceived neutrality rests on a gendered substructure: the "abstract job" presumes a worker whose full availability to the organization is structurally assumed, a condition that has historically disadvantaged those with obligations beyond the job boundary. As a result, Acker (1990) demonstrated that there is a systematic allocation of authority, planning, and decision-making among specific workers. Others, however, receive roles that facilitate the organization's smooth operation but lack formal power. The editorial role structure documented here—where executive authority is concentrated among men and operational and support maintenance work is disproportionately associated with women—strongly consistent with this pattern in a knowledge-production context. Importantly, this structure becomes visible only when editorial roles are broken down into parts: an analysis at the level of overall board composition would show the undifferentiated picture that Acker's framework predicts organizations create to naturalize these roles. The theoretical connection to Daniels (1987) and Star and Strauss (1999) enhances this interpretation. Daniels described a key feature of invisible work: it is considered essential when absent but not acknowledged as work when present. The language editor, the submission coordinator, and the statistics reviewer: each is quickly missed when the role is unfilled, yet each rarely results in a formal publication credit, an h-index contribution, or a line in the CV of the person doing it. Star and Strauss (1999) defined the concept as articulation work—the work that "gets things back on track" in organizational settings, invisible to rational models of work because it forms the background for all visible activity. We do not directly measure invisibility as a subjective experience or as a formal reward outcome; rather, we use the invisible labor framework to interpret a role structure in which sustaining work carries lower formal authority — and is less legible to the board-composition metrics through which editorial equity is typically assessed. This has a direct methodological implication: indicators built around overall board presence will undercount the role-level asymmetry this study documents, precisely because they cannot distinguish between roles that differ in authority. The connection between academic service burden research and this argument deepens and clarifies it. O'Meara et al. (2017), referencing Acker's (1990) framework and using time-diary data from research university faculty, demonstrated that women faculty receive more work requests than men, and that these requests differ systematically: women are more often assigned what the authors, citing Acker and Dillabough (2007), call organizational housekeeping—tasks broadly defined as unskilled, local, and low-prestige—while men are more likely to be assigned problem-solving, visioning, and strategic planning tasks. The parallel with operational roles in journal publishing is suggestive. The operational editorial duties identified here—reviewer coordination, workflow management, handling editor functions—are akin to academic housekeeping in the journal context: vital to the production process but offering limited gatekeeping authority and little capacity to build the symbolic capital that boosts academic careers. This finding does not claim to be identical to the literature on campus service burdens; instead, it develops its own framework. The same organizational logic that guides women toward local, maintenance-focused academic work seems to operate within the editorial ecosystems those academics maintain. For research on editorial boards, this similarity has a direct measurement implication: overall board-composition metrics are to role stratification what department-level headcounts are to faculty workload distribution—the appropriate unit of analysis for one question, but not for the other. This dual structure—executive exclusion combined with operational absorption—has often been concealed in previous editorial gender research, as we discuss in the next section. We should emphasize its implications for understanding gender equity in editorial practice. Ridgeway and Correll (2004) argued that hegemonic gender beliefs act as background identities in social-relational contexts, shaping evaluations and role assignments in ways that are often implicit but cumulative. A journal where women are well represented in operational and support roles, while men occupy the editor-in-chief position, should not automatically be considered gender-equitable: such a setup may show representation but still sustain authority disparities, with women's greater presence in supporting roles normalizing, rather than challenging, their exclusion from formal power positions. The Aggregation Trap Addressing RQ3, a substantial proportion of the editorial gender research literature operationalizes gender representation at the level of the "editorial board," either as an undifferentiated category or by distinguishing only between the editor-in-chief and all other board members (Goyanes et al., 2025; Haeffel et al., 2024; Pinho-Gomes et al., 2021; Wang et al., 2024). Pooling executive, operational, support, and symbolic roles into a single representation indicator cancels out the opposing directional effects documented here. Model 1d, which replicates this aggregated approach by combining executive and operational roles into a single, broad gatekeeping outcome, yields an insignificant gender coefficient (OR = 1.023, p = .361). The proportional odds model (Model 2) tests whether gender predicts position in the full role hierarchy and produces a null result. The likelihood ratio test against a fully unconstrained non-parallel model confirms that this null result is not a statistical artifact: the proportionality assumption holds for gender, and the null reflects genuine cancellation of opposing role-specific effects. Just as studies of faculty workload that rely on coarse categories—courses taught and publications completed—systematically miss the smaller, distributed service tasks that constitute most of the gendered workload differential documented by O'Meara et al. (2017), aggregated editorial board measures miss the role-level heterogeneity that is precisely where gender stratification operates. This is not merely a measurement artifact. It is a substantively consequential misspecification. An institution monitoring its editorial gender equity through aggregate board-composition metrics will observe approximate parity and may incorrectly conclude that no structural intervention is required (Wu et al., 2020). The present findings suggest that aggregate metrics are likely to understate executive exclusion and to render operational and support overrepresentation invisible. Gender equity interventions focused solely on increasing women's overall board presence may therefore leave the underlying role stratification intact—or could even worsen it by adding women to sustaining positions to meet representation targets. The methodological implication is direct: role-disaggregated analysis is a necessary condition for robust inference about editorial gender equity in role-differentiated settings. The four-category typology developed here—executive, operational, support, and symbolic—is applicable wherever a platform-based editorial system standardizes role assignments in ways that permit mapping onto differentiated authority structures. The DergiPark architecture makes this derivation unusually transparent, but the typological logic applies to any editorial management system that separates decision authority from workflow coordination. We suggest that future editorial gender studies adopt role-disaggregated designs as standard and that meta-analytic work in this domain weight findings accordingly. Disciplinary Amplification Role stratification varies across different disciplinary fields. The significant gender × STEM interactions in both the operational model (OR = 0.718, p = .005) and the broad gatekeeping model (OR = 0.752, p = .013) show that disciplinary context influences, but does not remove, gender stratification. In STEM journals, the female advantage in operational role occupancy decreases by about 22–28% compared to the Social Sciences baseline, and this pattern is consistent in both models. Women in STEM editorial settings appear to be distributed across a narrower range of active editorial roles than their counterparts in other fields — they are less likely to reach executive positions or hold operational roles at rates like those in Social Sciences or Mixed/Interdisciplinary journals. The attenuation of the executive gender gap in Mixed/Interdisciplinary journals (OR = 1.823, p = .040) suggests that disciplinary context can moderate gender stratification in both directions—amplifying it in STEM and partially attenuating it in interdisciplinary settings—though neither interaction fully offsets the main executive exclusion effect. This finding aligns with extensive research showing that STEM is a highly status-based discipline. Larivière et al. (2013) found that gender gaps in authorship are larger in physical and natural sciences compared to social sciences or humanities. Lerback and Hanson (2017) reported that STEM journals invite fewer women as peer reviewers relative to their presence in those fields. Although these studies do not directly examine how editorial roles are assigned, they suggest that STEM fields often display stronger gender-based sorting in recognition, evaluation, and access to prestigious professional roles. Ridgeway and Correll (2004) proposed that gender beliefs act as background identities in social contexts, providing a mechanism: when activities central to a setting are culturally gender-typed—like technical skills in STEM—hegemonic beliefs about men's greater status and competence tend to bias role allocation, influencing who is considered for editorial positions. Supporting this idea, Correll et al. (2007) showed that individuals in lower-status social groups face stricter evaluation standards, even when their qualifications are equal; those in higher-status groups are more likely to receive the benefit of the doubt. While our observational design cannot directly isolate evaluative mechanisms, the STEM interaction pattern is consistent with status-based allocation processes operating more strongly in technically gender-typed disciplinary environments. Platform Standardization as a Methodological Contribution Beyond the substantive findings, this study illustrates the analytical value of national platform-based data infrastructures for research on editorial work. The main methodological challenge in this area has been the inconsistency of role labels across publishers, journals, and disciplines: an 'Associate Editor' at one journal might perform functions like a 'Section Editor' or 'Handling Editor' at another. Comparative studies that combine these labels create systematic measurement error, especially at the boundary between executive authority and operational support—precisely where gender stratification has the most impact. DergiPark's UDS architecture addresses this issue structurally. Since editorial roles are implemented as system permission sets rather than journal-specific titles, the connection between observed role labels and their functional categories is more directly grounded in the platform's workflow logic than in journal conventions. This method does not remove interpretive decisions—the thesaurus role created for this study involved 2,698 mapping choices across Turkish and English labels—but it limits the researcher's interpretive freedom by offering a shared operational reference point. Platform architecture requires users to make classification choices that are neither automatic nor obvious, and it increases the extent to which those choices are constrained by external factors. This capability is not a feature unique to DergiPark. Finland's Journal.fi and Sweden's Publicera platform, both operating on a comparable national OJS-based architecture (Pölönen, Syrjämäki, et al., 2021), provide similar infrastructural conditions for role-disaggregated editorial research. The present study offers a proof of concept for what comparative platform research could accomplish: a study linking DergiPark, Journal.fi, and Publicera data could, in principle, differentiate the effects of disciplinary culture, institutional context, and platform governance on editorial gender stratification with a level of specificity that no single-platform study can provide. We see this study as a promising direction for the next generation of editorial labor research, one that considers platform infrastructure as an independent variable rather than just a background condition. Limitations and Future Directions Several limitations of the present study warrant acknowledgement. First, the data are cross-sectional: the analysis captures role distribution at a single point (December 2025) and cannot speak to whether the observed patterns reflect stable structural features or a transitional moment. Longitudinal data tracking role assignments across the platform's full operational history would be necessary to assess whether the gender gaps documented here are widening, stable, or narrowing. Second, gender was inferred from given names using a country-contextual classifier. While coverage was high (96%) and the Turkish name pool is strongly sex-differentiated, name-based gender inference is a proxy for self-identified gender and does not capture non-binary identities. Third, the ceiling rule applied to individuals with multiple roles yields conservative estimates of overrepresentation in operational and support categories: people listed as both a board member and a section editor are categorized as operational, which underestimates how many women members hold multiple roles across the hierarchy. The current design does not fully capture this accumulation. Using a multi-membership model that considers each person–role pair as a separate observation would address this issue but would also increase the complexity of the clustering structure. Fourth, the study does not directly examine the mechanisms behind the observed patterns. Although the finding that women are more likely to hold operational and support roles aligns with the idea that work supporting women is structurally allocated, it could also be due to unmeasured factors like different preferences, availability, or network-based selection processes. Experimental research on status-based evaluation—including Correll et al.'s (2007) demonstration that equally qualified candidates face stricter competence standards when in lower-status roles—illustrates how evaluative biases can create systematic role differences even without explicit intent. Our observational approach cannot directly identify these evaluative mechanisms, and distinguishing between structural allocation and status-based evaluation remains an open empirical question in this area. Finally, the Turkish academic publishing ecosystem has unique features—such as the centralized platform governance of TÜBİTAK-ULAKBİM and the indexing incentives of TR Dizin, which followed the post-2010 growth in journal count—that may limit how easily findings can be applied to other national contexts. We argue that DergiPark represents an analytically clear rather than typical case for studying editorial labor: its infrastructural transparency makes mechanisms detectable that would otherwise be hidden. Cross-platform comparative research—extending the analytical framework created here to Journal.fi, Publicera, and eventually to major international publishers whose editorial management systems allow role-level data extraction—remains a crucial next step for testing the generalizability of the dual mechanism documented in this study. Conclusion Analyzing 38,241 person–journal observations across 1,549 DergiPark journals, this study indicates a dual mechanism shaping the gendered distribution of editorial labor. Women are significantly less likely than men with similar academic rank and institutional profiles to hold executive editorial roles (OR = 0.583, AME = − 1.63 pp), indicating a deficit of approximately 48% at the highest editorial level. At the same time, women are more likely to take on operational roles that handle the editorial process (OR = 1.090, AME = + 1.78 pp) and support roles that provide technical and linguistic services essential for publication (OR = 1.151, AME = + 0.88 pp). Both effects remain consistent after accounting for academic rank, indicating they are not solely due to credential differences between men and women. Executive segregation and operational absorption are not opposite ends of a single spectrum: they are two concurrent mechanisms, operating in opposite directions, that together create a gendered division of editorial labor. The most consequential analytical finding may be a null result. When executive and operational roles are pooled into a single gatekeeping indicator—mirroring the dominant operationalization in prior literature—the gender coefficient becomes non-significant (OR = 1.023, p = .361), and the proportional odds model across the full role hierarchy yields the same result. These nulls are not failures of detection; they result from genuine cancellation, as confirmed by the likelihood ratio test against a fully unconstrained model. The null result is therefore not evidence of equity: it is evidence that aggregated editorial board metrics structurally conceal the two opposing mechanisms this study isolates. An institution monitoring gender equity through aggregate board composition will observe approximate parity. It may conclude that no intervention is needed, precisely because the measure it uses cannot, by design, detect the problem. Role-disaggregated analysis is not a refinement; it is a precondition for valid inference. Taken together, the findings reframe the question that editorial gender research has been asking. The relevant gap exists at all levels, even though the executive deficit is significant and remains after accounting for rank. It is also present in the structure of labor below the top: in who coordinates the reviewers, processes the manuscripts, and maintains the workflow that enables editorial decisions. Drawing on Acker's (1990) analysis of gendered organizations, Daniels' (1987) conceptualization of invisible work, and O'Meara et al.'s (2017) documentation of organizational housekeeping in academic settings, this study suggests that journal publishing reproduces a familiar structural logic—sustaining work is disproportionately performed by women and carries limited formal authority and reduced scholarly visibility within the role structures this platform makes legible. Women listed on editorial boards are present, but their presence is not equal. The roles they mainly hold are visible in platform records; however, whether that visibility leads to scholarly recognition, citation, or career progress remains beyond this study's scope to determine. What the data do establish is the structure of resource distribution: visibility does not equal credit. Declarations Data Availability The dataset and all supplementary materials supporting the findings of this study are publicly available on the OSF (https://osf.io/sxmyb/overview?view_only=527f5172d57a4004bab5b39f5caf0e0f) Funding Declaration This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors. Author Contributions Kemal Yayla: Conceptualization, Methodology, Data curation, Formal analysis, Writing – original draft Şehnaz Ceylan: Conceptualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing. References Acker, J. (1990). HIERARCHIES, JOBS, BODIES: A Theory of Gendered Organizations. Gender & Society , 4 (2), 139–158. https://doi.org/10.1177/089124390004002002 Acker, S., and Dillabough, J. (2007). Women ‘learning to labour’ in the ‘male emporium’: Exploring gendered work in teacher education. 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Gender and Geographical Disparity in Editorial Boards of Journals in Psychology and Neuroscience. Nature Neuroscience , 25 (3), 272–279. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41593-022-01012-w Picano, E. (2026). Who Is the Editor-in-Chief of a Scientific Journal: Supreme Judge or Mailman? Exploration of Cardiology , 4 , 101286. https://doi.org/10.37349/ec.2026.101286 Pinho-Gomes, A.-C., Vassallo, A., Thompson, K., Womersley, K., Norton, R., and Woodward, M. (2021). Representation of Women Among Editors in Chief of Leading Medical Journals. JAMA Network Open , 4 (9), e2123026. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.23026 Pölönen, J., Guns, R., Kulczycki, E., Sivertsen, G., and Engels, T. C. (2021). National Lists of Scholarly Publication Channels: An Overview and Recommendations for Their Construction and Maintenance. Journal of Data and Information Science , 6 (1), 50–86. https://doi.org/10.2478/jdis-2021-0004 Pölönen, J., Syrjämäki, S., Nygård, A.-J., and Hammarfelt, B. (2021). 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Closing the Door Behind: Metric-Based Research Evaluation Systems and Gatekeeping Towards Young Researchers. Scientometrics , 130 (4), 2291–2310. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-025-05282-6 Star, S. L., and Strauss, A. (1999). Layers of Silence, Arenas of Voice: The Ecology of Visible and Invisible Work. Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) , 8 (1–2), 9–30. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1008651105359 Tamer, H. Y., Övgün, B., and Yalçintaş, A. (2020). Akademik Büyük Veri ve Bilimsel Bilgi Üretimi: Dergipark Örneği. Ankara Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi , 11 (1), 93. https://doi.org/10.33537/sobild.2020.11.1.10 Topaz, C. M., and Sen, S. (2016). Gender Representation on Journal Editorial Boards in the Mathematical Sciences. PLOS ONE , 11 (8), e0161357. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0161357 Van Dalen, H. P., and Henkens, K. (2012). Intended and Unintended Consequences of a Publish‐or‐Perish Culture: A Worldwide Survey. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology , 63 (7), 1282–1293. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.22636 Vuong, Q. (2022). The Editor: A Demanding but Underestimated Role in Scientific Publishing. Learned Publishing , 35 (3), 418–422. https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1466 Wang, D. K., Clark, L. M., Stephens, L. D., Adkins, B. D., Khan, S. S., Booth, G. S., and Jacobs, J. W. (2024). Analysis of editor in chief gender and associated journal variables among 126 pathology journals. American Journal of Clinical Pathology , 162 (1), 12–16. https://doi.org/10.1093/ajcp/aqae018 Weisshaar, K. (2017). Publish and Perish? An Assessment of Gender Gaps in Promotion to Tenure in Academia. Social Forces , 96 (2), 529–560. https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/sox052 Wu, D., Lu, X., Li, J., and Li, J. (2020). Does the Institutional Diversity of Editorial Boards Increase Journal Quality? The Case Economics Field. Scientometrics , 124 (2), 1579–1597. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-020-03505-6 Additional Declarations No competing interests reported. Supplementary Files SCIEDergiparkAppendixA.docx SCIEDergiparkAppendixB.docx Cite Share Download PDF Status: Posted Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Research Square lets you share your work early, gain feedback from the community, and start making changes to your manuscript prior to peer review in a journal. As a division of Research Square Company, we’re committed to making research communication faster, fairer, and more useful. We do this by developing innovative software and high quality services for the global research community. Our growing team is made up of researchers and industry professionals working together to solve the most critical problems facing scientific publishing. Also discoverable on Platform About Our Team In Review Editorial Policies Advisory Board Help Center Resources Author Services Accessibility API Access RSS feed Manage Cookie Preferences © Research Square 2026 | ISSN 2693-5015 (online) Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information {"props":{"pageProps":{"initialData":{"identity":"rs-9152762","acceptedTermsAndConditions":true,"allowDirectSubmit":true,"archivedVersions":[],"articleType":"Research Article","associatedPublications":[],"authors":[{"id":617248353,"identity":"62d76fb9-2ad9-4c94-9a1b-d8ae2d8ad236","order_by":0,"name":"Kemal Yayla","email":"data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAZAAAAAyAQMAAABI0h/eAAAABlBMVEX///8AAABVwtN+AAAACXBIWXMAAA7EAAAOxAGVKw4bAAABAklEQVRIiWNgGAWjYBACCRDxAESwMzA+SDgAFjQgrCUBRDAzMBsgtCQQp4VNgoEYLZLt3YkfEhgOyxscZn5W8eCMXWIDe/M2CcYf93BqkeY5u1kCqMVww2E2sxsJN5ITG3iOlUkwJBTj1CInkbsBpIVxw2EGoJYPBxIbJHLMgFpwu0xO/u3mH0At9hsOs38rAGuRf4Nfi7QE7zaQLYkbDvOYMSTcANnCg1+LZE/uNosEg/TkmYd5iiUSziQbt/GkFVskpOHWInH87OYbHyqsbfuOt2/8+OOYnWw/++GNNz7Y4NYCAQbNDAoHoGw2EEFIAxDUMcg3EFY1CkbBKBgFIxQAAHK8V90DOHUfAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC","orcid":"","institution":"Izmir Kâtip Çelebi University","correspondingAuthor":true,"prefix":"","firstName":"Kemal","middleName":"","lastName":"Yayla","suffix":""},{"id":617248354,"identity":"c7a806c4-f81a-4ad4-b0f3-dc044e076232","order_by":1,"name":"Şehnaz Ceylan","email":"","orcid":"","institution":"Karabük University","correspondingAuthor":false,"prefix":"","firstName":"Şehnaz","middleName":"","lastName":"Ceylan","suffix":""}],"badges":[],"createdAt":"2026-03-17 22:24:15","currentVersionCode":1,"declarations":"","doi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-9152762/v1","doiUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-9152762/v1","draftVersion":[],"editorialEvents":[],"editorialNote":"","failedWorkflow":false,"files":[{"id":106492718,"identity":"a7db881d-07e5-4e01-9537-71a48ea038d5","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2026-04-09 07:43:41","extension":"pdf","order_by":0,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"manuscript-pdf","size":655416,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"manuscript.pdf","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-9152762/v1/fd8e6cc5-6e3e-4231-8b2e-a10f4ca16100.pdf"},{"id":106492713,"identity":"841da0c5-6e72-44a0-919d-d1b90738cc1e","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2026-04-09 07:43:36","extension":"docx","order_by":1,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"supplement","size":15297,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"SCIEDergiparkAppendixA.docx","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-9152762/v1/914444242cf372921fb0e020.docx"},{"id":106492712,"identity":"b64d4d94-1161-48d4-9de4-4efda3d7e77e","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2026-04-09 07:43:36","extension":"docx","order_by":2,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"supplement","size":16238,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"SCIEDergiparkAppendixB.docx","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-9152762/v1/a03b6ff4f5276350565ecc33.docx"}],"financialInterests":"No competing interests reported.","formattedTitle":"Presence Is Not Parity, Visibility Is Not Credit: Gendered Hierarchies in Platform- Based Academic Publishing","fulltext":[{"header":"Introduction","content":"\u003cp\u003eAcademic life increasingly emphasizes measurable research outputs. In many national systems, publication has shifted from being just one of many professional activities to becoming the primary measure for evaluation, reward, and career advancement (Şener et al., 2025). Comparative studies of institutional review, promotion, and tenure policies show that journal-based output indicators\u0026mdash;such as publication counts, citation metrics, and journal prestige\u0026mdash;now serve as the main indicators of quality in faculty assessments across different countries (Pontika et al., 2022; Van Dalen and Henkens, 2012). This focus on output has a structural impact that is less often studied. As journal metrics become the primary means of academic recognition, the journals that produce them gain institutional importance beyond simply sharing research. They act as gatekeepers, facilitating the construction and dissemination of scholarly reputation. Such activity makes the work arrangements behind journal governance\u0026mdash;who decides what is published, who manages the process, and who maintains the workflow\u0026mdash;a significant subject for study in its own right (Picano, 2026).\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eOne essential aspect of that infrastructure is editorial work (Vuong, 2022). Scientific journals rely on a distributed editorial structure that includes not only editors-in-chief but also associate editors, section editors, managing editors, language editors, statistical editors, field editors, and various advisory roles. These roles are not interchangeable. They vary in decision-making power, visibility, routine workload, and closeness to gatekeeping authority. Moher et al. (2017) emphasize this point from a competency perspective: editorial work is a structured activity with specific responsibilities rather than a single, undifferentiated title. For this reason alone, the category of \"editorial board member\" is analytically unstable. Labeling editorial participation as a flat institutional role hides the fact that editorial governance is internally layered.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThat distinction is important because the modern publication system tends to reward visible outputs while often overlooking the types of labor that support and maintain the process itself. Some editorial roles are highly visible and closely linked to authority, reputation, and influence; others are more routine, maintenance tasks, and organizationally essential but less likely to earn the scholarly recognition that institutional evaluation systems value. This imbalance between visible academic status and less visible supporting work is not accidental. Weisshaar (2017), examining gender gaps in promotion to tenure, shows that overall career results can look similar across groups even if organizational efforts and recognition are distributed unevenly \u0026mdash; a conclusion that relies entirely on going beyond summary statistics to understand how mechanisms produce these results. The same applies to editorial governance: simply knowing women are on journal boards says little about how editorial labor, authority, and recognition are distributed within the role structure. Summary metrics can hide the very differences that matter most.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eExtensive research has already demonstrated the ongoing underrepresentation of women in editorial leadership across various fields. Management and business journals (Metz and Harzing, 2012, 2009), mathematics (Topaz and Sen, 2016), and accounting (Dhanani and Jones, 2017) have documented this trend. Multidisciplinary analyses covering authorship and board makeup (Maule\u0026oacute;n et al., 2013) as well as discipline-specific studies in psychology and neuroscience (Palser et al., 2022) highlight the same pattern, along with broader commentary framing academic publishing as a gendered system where seemingly impartial processes perpetuate unequal access to influence and recognition (Lundine et al., 2018). Together, these studies strongly indicate that editorial representation is unequal. However, they also point out a recurring limitation: most measures of inequality focus on overall board composition, the editor-in-chief position alone, or only very broad distinctions between senior and non-senior roles.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThat is where literature becomes less clear than it seems. Knowing that women are generally underrepresented doesn't tell us how they are distributed across editorial roles. A journal may appear relatively balanced overall yet still concentrate men in executive gatekeeping roles and women in coordinating, support, or maintenance positions. Conversely, an increase in women's overall board presence might reflect growth in lower-authority roles rather than a real redistribution of formal power. This is an important methodological detail. It distinguishes between measuring participation and measuring stratification. If roles with different authority levels are combined into a single indicator, opposite patterns can cancel each other out. The result is a misleading impression of parity\u0026mdash;or a null result that reflects aggregation rather than true equality.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eA smaller but significant subset of studies highlights this more profound issue by going beyond simple headcounts. Fox et al. (2019) demonstrate that editorial composition can influence peer-review dynamics, indicating that board structure is not just symbolic but impacts how scholarship is assessed. Liu et al. (2023) similarly show that editorial inequality is connected to broader patterns of status concentration and self-publication, reinforcing the idea that editorial roles are part of unequal scholarly power relations. These studies are important because they shift the discussion from mere presence to actual consequences. However, even this more advanced research rarely disaggregates editorial work to distinguish between executive authority, operational coordination, support tasks, and symbolic roles. The ways gender inequality are organized within editorial structures\u0026mdash;rather than just across them\u0026mdash;remain largely underexplored.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThis gap is especially consequential considering what controlled empirical designs can reveal. Weisshaar (2017) shows that when promotion outcomes are examined at sufficient resolution\u0026mdash;disaggregating by career stage, institutional type, and field rather than relying on aggregate rates\u0026mdash;patterns that appear gender-neutral at the surface level can reveal systematic asymmetries in how equivalent performances are rewarded for men and women. The methodological lesson is general: aggregate outcomes do not transparently reveal underlying mechanisms, and the choice of units of analysis is not a technical detail but a substantive one. Applied to editorial governance, the relevant question is not simply whether women are present on journal boards, but where they are situated within the editorial division of labor and what authority those positions confer. Once that question is asked, the standard board-composition model begins to look conceptually blunt. Presence on a board is not equivalent to parity of influence if the roles constituting that presence differ systematically in decision authority, workload visibility, and formal decision authority.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThis study addresses this gap by analyzing how editorial roles are divided within a national platform-based journal system, where role assignments are more consistent than in the fragmented publishing environments that much of the previous research depends on. A common challenge in researching editorial boards is that role titles differ greatly across journals and publishers, making cross-journal comparisons difficult and leading researchers to lump different functions into broad categories. A platform-based system minimizes that confusion by grounding role comparisons in a shared operational framework rather than journal-specific traditions, making it easier to analyze role distinctions on a large scale. This enables us to move beyond simply questioning whether women are represented to a more precise inquiry into how editorial responsibilities are allocated across various role types.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThis study addresses these gaps through three research questions. RQ1: Are women and men distributed differently across executive editorial roles when academic rank, institutional visibility, and disciplinary context are held constant? RQ2: Do gender differences in role occupancy extend beyond the executive level \u0026mdash; specifically to operational and support roles that sustain the editorial workflow without carrying gatekeeping authority? RQ3: Does aggregating across role categories, as is common in prior editorial board research, produce a misleading indicator of gender equity by cancelling opposing role-specific effects?\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThis article contends that aggregate editorial board metrics can misrepresent gender equity in settings with role-based differences. It examines whether women and men are evenly distributed across editorial roles or if overall parity hides a more layered internal structure. By analyzing executive, operational, support, and symbolic roles, the study clarifies why headcounts at the board level alone are inadequate for accurate conclusions about editorial gender equity. Its contributions are threefold: first, it shifts the focus from overall presence to role-specific distribution in addressing board inequality; second, it highlights the importance of platform-standardized metadata for studying editorial governance; and third, it offers empirical evidence that representation and authority should be viewed as separate categories in analyses of scholarly publishing.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"Methods and Data","content":"\u003ch3\u003eData Source\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDergiPark is a national academic journal hosting platform operated by T\u0026Uuml;BİTAK-ULAKBİM, the scientific and technological research council of T\u0026uuml;rkiye. Established in 2013 and migrated from Open Journal Systems (OJS) to a domestically developed journal management infrastructure (UDS) in 2017 (DergiPark, n.d.), DergiPark provides hosting, editorial workflow management, and digital object identifier (DOI) assignment services free of charge to all member journals(Aslan, 2019; Tamer et al., 2020) . As of January 2026, the platform houses virtually the entire landscape of Turkish academic journal publishing, encompassing more than 2,900 journals across all scientific fields.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe platform constitutes an analytically privileged research setting for two reasons. First, its national scope allows the complete editorial labor ecosystem of a country\u0026apos;s academic publishing to be captured within a single data infrastructure, rather than through convenience sampling from international databases (P\u0026ouml;l\u0026ouml;nen, Guns, et al., 2021). Second, and more critically, DergiPark\u0026apos;s UDS architecture standardizes editorial workflow regardless of disciplinary context. Role assignments are operationalized as system permission sets rather than journal-defined labels: a journal in nursing studies and a journal in econometrics follow identical submission, assignment, review, and publication workflows within the same platform. This structural standardization reduces a longstanding methodological problem in editorial board research \u0026mdash; the non-equivalence of role titles across publishers and journals \u0026mdash; by grounding role comparisons in operational function rather than nomenclature. National platforms operating under comparable architectures, such as Finland\u0026apos;s Journal.fi (P\u0026ouml;l\u0026ouml;nen, Syrj\u0026auml;m\u0026auml;ki, et al., 2021) and Sweden\u0026apos;s Publicera (Publicera, 2022), demonstrate that this model is not unique to Turkey; DergiPark nonetheless represents its most comprehensive instantiation in terms of scale and coverage.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eData collection was conducted in December 2025 through dual-source web scraping: editorial board compositions were harvested from each journal\u0026apos;s public webpage, and individual editorial profiles were simultaneously retrieved from DergiPark\u0026apos;s standardized profile pages. The final dataset comprises 38,241 person\u0026ndash;journal observations corresponding to 29,927 unique individuals across 1,549 journals.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eRole Typology\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA central challenge in editorial board research is the heterogeneity of role labels across journals. Web-facing titles such as \u0026apos;Dil Edit\u0026ouml;r\u0026uuml;\u0026apos; (Language Editor), \u0026apos;Baş Edit\u0026ouml;r\u0026apos; (Editor-in-Chief), and \u0026apos;Alan Edit\u0026ouml;rleri\u0026apos; (Section Editors) reflect journal-level conventions rather than operationally distinct functions. To address this, we developed a systematic role thesaurus mapping raw web-scraped labels to standardized role families through a multi-pass procedure combining regular expression matching, heuristic rules, fuzzy matching, and manual annotation. The thesaurus covers 2,698 unique raw label variants in Turkish and English. The mapping process was guided by a hierarchical decision protocol: it started with regular expression matching, then used heuristic rules for known variation forms, employed fuzzy string matching for near-duplicates, and included manual annotation for ambiguous cases. Each decision level is recorded in the thesaurus, allowing retrospective review of any individual mapping decision. Labels at the operational-support boundary\u0026mdash;including \u0026apos;Statistics Editor,\u0026apos; \u0026apos;Ethics Editor,\u0026apos; and \u0026apos;Publication Coordinator\u0026apos;\u0026mdash;underwent explicit manual review and are marked in the thesaurus.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eStandardized role families then collapsed into a four-category analytical typology based on the locus of editorial authority and the visibility of the associated labor within the academic reward system (Table 1). This typology was derived from the operational logic of DergiPark\u0026apos;s UDS permission architecture, validated against the scraped profile data, and informed by prior conceptualizations of editorial role stratification (Grod et al., 2010; Memon et al., 2022).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003eTable 1. Four-category editorial role typology.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ctable border=\"1\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"0\" width=\"598\"\u003e\n \u003ctbody\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 115px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eCategory\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 128px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePower Level\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 153px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eExample Labels (DergiPark)\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 202px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eOperational Description\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 115px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eExecutive\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 128px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eHigh\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 153px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eBaş Edit\u0026ouml;r, Editor-in-Chief, Managing Editor\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 202px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eFinal editorial decision authority: appoints reviewers and accepts/rejects manuscripts\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 115px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eOperational\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 128px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eMedium\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 153px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eAlan Edit\u0026ouml;r\u0026uuml;, Edit\u0026ouml;r Yardımcısı, Associate Editor, Section Editor\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 202px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eDay-to-day workflow management; reviewer coordination; gatekeeping without final authority\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 115px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eSupport\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 128px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eLow/None\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 153px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eDil Edit\u0026ouml;r\u0026uuml;, Mizanpaj Edit\u0026ouml;r\u0026uuml;, İstatistik Edit\u0026ouml;r\u0026uuml;, Sekreterya\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 202px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eTechnical and linguistic processing; backstage labor enabling publication without gatekeeping power\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 115px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eSymbolic/Board\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 128px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eSymbolic\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 153px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eYayın Kurulu, Danışma Kurulu, Editorial Board, Advisory Board\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 202px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eReputational endorsement; rarely involved in manuscript-level decisions\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003c/tbody\u003e\n\u003c/table\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhere an individual held multiple roles within the same journal, the most senior role was retained (ceiling rule), following the hierarchy executive \u0026gt; operational \u0026gt; support \u0026gt; symbolic. This decision produces conservative estimates of operational absorption: individuals simultaneously listed as both board member and section editor are classified as operational, understating the extent to which women accumulate roles across the hierarchy. Reported operational and support estimates should therefore be interpreted as lower bounds.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eGender Classification\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGender was inferred from given names using GenderAPI[1]\u0026apos;s country-contextual classifier, applied with Turkey (TR) as the country parameter. Turkish given names are strongly sex-differentiated, resulting in high classification accuracy for this corpus. Predictions were retained only when gender_confidence \u0026ge; 0.60 (medium or high confidence tier). Observations falling below this threshold or classified as \u0026apos;unknown\u0026apos; were assigned gender_for_analysis = NaN and excluded from inferential analyses. Table 2 details exclusion criteria and counts.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003eTable 2. Gender classification exclusion criteria.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ctable border=\"1\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"0\" width=\"557\"\u003e\n \u003ctbody\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 187px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eExclusion Criterion\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 80px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003en\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 291px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eRationale\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 187px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eEmpty first name\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 80px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e13\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 291px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eGenderAPI call not possible; no gender_pred assigned\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 187px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eUnknown gender\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 80px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e413\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 291px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eName absent from GenderAPI database; confidence threshold unmet\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 187px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eLow confidence tier\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 80px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e613\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 291px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003egender_confidence \u0026lt; 0.60; prediction unreliable (gender-neutral or rare names)\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 187px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eDeniz anomaly\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 80px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e114\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 291px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eGenderAPI (TR context) coded all 114 instances as female; expected ~50/50 distribution; systematic bias excluded\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003c/tbody\u003e\n\u003c/table\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne systematic classifier artefact was identified and addressed: observations bearing the given name \u0026apos;Deniz\u0026apos; (n = 114) were excluded from the main analysis due to a documented bias in the Turkish-context classifier and are available as a separate robustness check[2].\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eCovariates\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAcademic title was extracted from editorial profile pages and harmonized into four levels: full professor, associate professor, assistant professor, and other/unlisted. Where the same individual held different titles across journals, the most senior title was used. ORCID presence was coded as a binary indicator of institutional visibility and integration into international scholarly infrastructure. Affiliation country was used to construct a binary indicator distinguishing Turkish-based from internationally affiliated individuals.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDisciplinary classification was performed by linking journals to OpenAlex through ISSN matching. Topic distributions from OpenAlex were aggregated to derive a dominant disciplinary category for each journal, yielding five categories: Social Sciences (n = 670), Mixed/Interdisciplinary (n = 829), STEM (n = 310), Health/Medicine (n = 202), and Arts \u0026amp; Humanities (n = 164). Journals without a reliable OpenAlex match (n = 60) were excluded from discipline-stratified analyses.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJournal institutionalization was captured through a five-tier variable based on journal age: new (0\u0026ndash;5 years), emerging (6\u0026ndash;10 years), established (11\u0026ndash;20 years), institutionalized (21\u0026ndash;39 years), and legacy (40+ years). A discipline-level female ratio \u0026mdash; the proportion of female editorial board members within each disciplinary category across the full dataset \u0026mdash; was also computed as a contextual control for field-level gender composition.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eAnalytical Strategy\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe estimated the probability of holding each role category as a function of gender, conditional on academic title, ORCID presence, affiliation country, journal institutionalization, and disciplinary context. All models include gender \u0026times; discipline interaction terms, except for the support role model (Model 1c), which tests a gender \u0026times; academic title interaction to examine whether rank moderates the gender\u0026ndash;support role association. Table 3 summarizes the five models estimated; full model specifications in LaTeX notation and implementation details are provided in Appendix A and Appendix B respectively.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003eTable 3. Analytical models.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ctable border=\"1\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"0\" width=\"624\"\u003e\n \u003ctbody\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 47px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eModel\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 140px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eOutcome\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 147px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eEstimator\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 291px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eNotes\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 47px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e1a\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 140px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eEIC / executive\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 147px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eFirth penalized logistic regression; profile likelihood confidence intervals\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 291px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eInteraction: gender \u0026times; disciplinary field. Academic title entered in collapsed four-level form to mitigate quasi-complete separation in this rare outcome. See Appendix B.\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 47px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e1b\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 140px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eOperational\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 147px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eLogistic regression with individual-level cluster-robust standard errors\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 291px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eInteraction: gender \u0026times; disciplinary field.\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 47px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e1c\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 140px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eSupport\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 147px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eLogistic regression with individual-level cluster-robust standard errors\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 291px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eInteraction: gender \u0026times; academic title \u0026mdash; tests whether rank moderates the gender\u0026ndash;support role association.\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 47px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e1d\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 140px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eBroad gatekeeping (executive + operational)\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 147px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eLogistic regression with individual-level cluster-robust standard errors\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 291px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eInteraction: gender \u0026times; disciplinary field. Sensitivity model replicating aggregated-outcome approach common in prior literature.\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 47px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e2\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 140px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eOrdered role hierarchy\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 147px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eProportional odds (cumulative logit) model; Wald confidence intervals\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 291px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eNo interaction. Proportional odds assumption assessed via likelihood ratio test against fully unconstrained model. See Appendix B.\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003c/tbody\u003e\n\u003c/table\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eStandard errors for Models 1b\u0026ndash;1d are clustered at the individual level to account for within-person correlation arising from individuals appearing on multiple journals. Where a DergiPark person identifier was available, it served as the cluster unit; otherwise, the individual\u0026apos;s profile URL was used. This hierarchy ensures that individuals who hold roles across multiple journals are treated as a single cluster rather than independent observations.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAverage marginal effects (AME) are reported for the gender coefficient in all models to enable comparison of effect magnitudes on a common probability scale. For the executive role model (Model 1a), estimated using Firth\u0026apos;s penalised likelihood rather than standard maximum likelihood, AMEs were computed using the model\u0026apos;s own variance estimates rather than the cluster-robust matrix applied to the other models; the resulting standard error should be interpreted conservatively. For Models 1b\u0026ndash;1d, AMEs were computed with the same cluster-robust covariance matrix used in the coefficient tests. Technical details of all AME computations are provided in Appendix B.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eModel 2 tests whether gender is associated with position in the full role hierarchy, treating the four categories as an ordered outcome: support \u0026lt; symbolic \u0026lt; operational \u0026lt; executive. Symbolic board membership is positioned above support roles in this ordering because board appointments carry a reputational threshold not required for technical support functions. The proportional odds assumption underlying this model was assessed by a likelihood ratio test against a fully unconstrained alternative; results are reported in Appendix B. All analyses were conducted in R (v4.4.x). Full replication code, including annotated scripts for all five models, is available at OSF (https://osf.io/sxmyb/overview?view_only=527f5172d57a4004bab5b39f5caf0e0f).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e[1]genderapi.io\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e[2]GenderAPI assigned female to all 114 instances of \u0026apos;Deniz\u0026apos; in this corpus. Population-level evidence indicates that Deniz is distributed approximately equally across sexes in Turkey; the unanimity reflects a database artefact. Robustness analyses comparing Deniz-included and Deniz-excluded specifications are reported in the supplementary materials.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"Results","content":"\u003cp\u003eThe analytical dataset comprises 38,241 person\u0026ndash;journal observations across 1,549 journals and 29,927 unique individuals. Women constitute 34.4% of the editorial workforce overall. Turkish-affiliated individuals account for 91.1% of observations, and 54.1% of individuals have a registered ORCID identifier. Role category distribution across the full sample reflects the structural weight of non-executive positions: executive roles account for 3.4% of observations, operational roles for 33.4%, support roles for 8.5%, and symbolic/board roles for the remaining 54.7%. Women\u0026apos;s overall representation at 34.4% therefore masks divergent distributions within each role category, which the models below disaggregate.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDisciplinary composition: Mixed/Interdisciplinary journals constitute the largest group (829, 53.5%), followed by Social Sciences (670, 43.3%), STEM (310, 20.0%), Health/Medicine (202, 13.0%), and Arts \u0026amp; Humanities (164, 10.6%). Journals span five institutionalization tiers: emerging (823, 53.1%), established (701, 45.3%), institutionalized (290, 18.7%), new (249, 16.1%), and legacy (172, 11.1%).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eModel 1a estimates the probability of holding an editor-in-chief or managing editor position. Women are significantly less likely than men of equivalent academic rank, ORCID status, and disciplinary context to hold executive editorial roles (OR = 0.583, 95% CI [0.510, 0.664], p \u0026lt; .001). The average marginal effect indicates a difference of \u0026minus;1.63 percentage points in the probability of executive role occupancy (AME = \u0026minus;0.0163, SE = 0.0018). Given the baseline EIC rate of 3.4%, this corresponds to a relative deficit of approximately 48% relative to the male baseline. As noted in Section 3.5, the Model 1a AME standard error is not cluster-corrected.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eORCID presence is associated with a substantially higher probability of executive appointment (OR = 1.541, p \u0026lt; .001), consistent with ORCID functioning as a proxy for institutional visibility. Academic title follows a monotonic positive gradient: professor-rank individuals are considerably more likely to hold EIC positions than the other_academic reference category.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA significant gender \u0026times; discipline interaction emerged for Mixed/Interdisciplinary journals (OR = 1.823, p = .040), indicating that the executive gender gap is attenuated in interdisciplinary contexts relative to single-discipline journals. This interaction does not fully offset the main gender effect: the net probability of women holding executive roles in Mixed/Interdisciplinary journals remains below the male baseline.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eModel 1b estimates the probability of holding an operational role. Women are more likely than men to occupy operational positions (OR = 1.090, AME = +1.78 pp, SE = 0.0052, p \u0026lt; .001). Academic title is inversely associated with operational role probability at the highest ranks: professors (OR = 0.414) are substantially less likely to hold operational roles than the other_academic reference category, whereas assistant professors (Dr. \u0026Ouml;ğretim \u0026Uuml;yesi, OR = 1.531) are more likely. A significant gender \u0026times; STEM interaction (OR = 0.718, p = .005) indicates that the female advantage in operational roles is approximately 28% smaller in STEM journals than in the Social Sciences reference category.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eModel 1c extends this pattern to support roles. Women are again significantly more likely to hold support positions than men of equivalent rank (OR = 1.151, AME = +0.88 pp, SE = 0.0028, p = .002). The title gradient is pronounced: full professors (OR = 0.018) and associate professors (OR = 0.045) are nearly completely absent from support roles. Model 1c tested a gender \u0026times; title interaction to examine whether the female support role elevation might be an artefact of women\u0026apos;s concentration in lower academic ranks; no significant moderation was detected. The gender effect therefore holds conditional on rank, indicating that women\u0026apos;s elevated support role probability is not driven by title composition alone.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003eTable 4. Average marginal effects of gender (female = 1) on editorial role occupancy.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ctable border=\"1\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"0\" width=\"599\"\u003e\n \u003ctbody\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 68px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eModel\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 167px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eOutcome\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 76px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAME\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 152px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e95% CI\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 68px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eOR\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 68px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ep\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 68px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e1a\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 167px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eEIC (executive)\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 76px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u0026minus;1.63 pp\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 152px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e[\u0026minus;1.98, \u0026minus;1.28]\u0026dagger;\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 68px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e0.583\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 68px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u0026lt; .001\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 68px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e1b\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 167px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eOperational\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 76px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e+1.78 pp\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 152px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e[+0.76, +2.80]\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 68px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e1.090\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 68px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e\u0026lt; .001\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 68px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e1c\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 167px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eSupport\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 76px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e+0.88 pp\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 152px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e[+0.33, +1.43]\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 68px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e1.151\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 68px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e.002\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003ctr\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 68px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e1d\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 167px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003eBroad gatekeeping\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 76px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e+0.49 pp\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 152px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e[\u0026minus;0.55, +1.53]\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 68px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e1.023\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003ctd style=\"width: 68px;\"\u003e\n \u003cp\u003e.361\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003c/td\u003e\n \u003c/tr\u003e\n \u003c/tbody\u003e\n\u003c/table\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eAME expressed in percentage points. CIs computed from cluster-robust standard errors (HC1) for Models 1b\u0026ndash;1d; \u0026dagger; Model 1a AME uses model-default SE (vcov = NULL; not cluster-corrected \u0026mdash; see Section 3.5). Profile likelihood CIs reported for Model 1a coefficients. OR = odds ratio from the corresponding logistic model. All models condition on academic title, ORCID presence, affiliation country, disciplinary category, and institutionalisation tier.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eModel 1d combines executive and operational roles into a single broad gatekeeping outcome. Under this specification, the gender coefficient is not statistically significant (OR = 1.023, AME = +0.49 pp, p = .361). The directional reversal relative to Model 1a arises because the positive female effect in operational roles (Model 1b) numerically offsets the negative executive-level effect when the two are pooled, demonstrating that aggregated-outcome analyses can conceal structurally distinct mechanisms operating in opposite directions.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eModel 2, a proportional odds model, tests whether gender is associated with position in the full ordered role hierarchy (support \u0026lt; symbolic \u0026lt; operational \u0026lt; executive). The gender coefficient is non-significant (OR = 0.974, p = .214). A likelihood ratio test against a fully unconstrained non-parallel model (VGAM::vglm) confirmed that the proportional odds assumption holds for gender (\u0026chi;\u0026sup2; = 4.12, df = 3, p = .249); the null result therefore reflects genuine cancellation of opposing role-specific effects rather than an artefact of the proportionality constraint.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe symbolic|operational threshold in Model 2 carries a notably large odds ratio (OR = 14.5), confirming that holding any active editorial role (operational or above) is substantially less probable than holding merely a symbolic board membership. This threshold is consistent across gender, indicating that board membership functions as a structurally distinct stratum rather than as the base of a continuous hierarchy.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGender \u0026times; STEM interactions are significant in both the operational model (OR = 0.718, p = .005) and the broad gatekeeping model (OR = 0.752, p = .013), and directionally consistent. In STEM journals, the female advantage in operational role probability is reduced by approximately 22\u0026ndash;28% relative to the Social Sciences baseline. No significant gender \u0026times; discipline interactions were detected for Health/Medicine, Arts \u0026amp; Humanities, or Legacy journals in these models.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the EIC model (Model 1a), the significant interaction for Mixed/Interdisciplinary journals (OR = 1.823, p = .040) represents a partial moderation of the executive gender gap in interdisciplinary contexts. As noted above, this interaction does not fully offset the main gender effect.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eORCID presence is a consistent positive predictor of senior role occupancy across all models, with odds ratios ranging from 1.318 (Model 2) to 1.541 (Model 1a). Academic title effects are consistent with role stratification expectations: full professors concentrate in executive roles and are near-absent from support functions, while lower title categories are associated with operational and support positions. The Turkish affiliation indicator (aff_country_TR) is not a significant predictor in any model after conditioning on the remaining covariates, indicating that the observed role\u0026ndash;gender associations are not driven by the compositional dominance of domestically affiliated individuals in the sample.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"Discussion","content":"\u003cp\u003eAddressing RQ1, the results are consistent with two simultaneous mechanisms. Women are significantly less likely to hold executive editorial roles\u0026mdash;editor-in-chief and managing editor positions that carry final decision-making authority over manuscripts (OR\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;0.583, AME\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;\u0026minus;\u0026thinsp;1.63 pp). At the same time, women are more likely than men of equivalent academic rank to occupy operational roles that manage the editorial workflow (OR\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;1.090, AME\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;+\u0026thinsp;1.78 pp) and support roles that provide the technical and linguistic services enabling publication (OR\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;1.151, AME\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;+\u0026thinsp;0.88 pp). These effects are not artifacts of women's lower representation in senior academic ranks: both persist after conditioning on academic title, and the gender \u0026times; title interaction in the support model is non-significant. This pattern shifts the interpretive focus from simple underrepresentation to the gendered distribution of editorial labor\u0026mdash;and, in doing so, connects to a broader set of theoretical arguments about how organizations allocate sustaining work.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eMuch of what sustains an institution never appears in its official account of itself. In her analysis of invisible work, Daniels (1987) argued that a wide range of activities\u0026mdash;coordinating logistics, managing interpersonal relations, and maintaining the conditions under which visible, credited work can take place\u0026mdash;falls outside the folk conception of work precisely because it is not remunerated, not publicly recognized, and not associated with the autonomous production of valued output. The devaluation of this sustaining work, Daniels (1987) showed, is inseparable from its gendering: activities performed predominantly by women come to be seen as expressions of natural aptitude rather than as skilled, effortful labor deserving recognition. We invoke this framework not to claim that editorial work is structurally equivalent to the domestic and volunteer labor Daniels (1987) analyzed, but rather because it offers an analytic analogy that illuminates a parallel dynamic in the organization of journal production. The editorial process is visible when it produces a published article and an authoritative decision; it is invisible when it involves coordinating reviewers, copyediting manuscripts, managing submission systems, and providing the administrative continuity without which publication decisions could not be routinely sustained. This study asks who performs which kind of editorial work\u0026mdash;and finds that the answer is structured by gender.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eExecutive Segregation and Operational Absorption\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe executive gender gap documented here\u0026mdash;women are approximately 42% less likely than men with similar credentials to hold editor-in-chief or managing editor roles\u0026mdash;aligns with findings from extensive research on editorial boards across various fields. Studies in medical journals consistently show that women are underrepresented in top editorial positions, even though their presence on advisory and associate boards is growing (Pinho-Gomes et al., 2021). Research in communication and journalism journals indicates that gender stratification persists at the highest levels of editorial hierarchies (Goyanes and de-Marcos, 2020). Similarly, business and management publishing also displays these patterns (Metz and Harzing, 2009). This study broadens this cross-disciplinary trend to the national publishing infrastructure of a middle-income country, with a comprehensive set of controls that account for academic rank, institutional visibility, disciplinary context, and journal institutionalization.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eAddressing RQ2, what the executive gap alone cannot explain is the direction of operational and support effects. In our findings, women are more likely to hold operational roles that coordinate submission workflows and reviewer assignments, as well as support roles involving copyediting, language processing, statistical review, and secretarial functions. Acker's (1990) analysis of gendered organizations provides the most direct theoretical insight here. Acker argued that organizations present themselves as gender-neutral systems of abstract jobs and hierarchy. Still, this perceived neutrality rests on a gendered substructure: the \"abstract job\" presumes a worker whose full availability to the organization is structurally assumed, a condition that has historically disadvantaged those with obligations beyond the job boundary. As a result, Acker (1990) demonstrated that there is a systematic allocation of authority, planning, and decision-making among specific workers. Others, however, receive roles that facilitate the organization's smooth operation but lack formal power. The editorial role structure documented here\u0026mdash;where executive authority is concentrated among men and operational and support maintenance work is disproportionately associated with women\u0026mdash;strongly consistent with this pattern in a knowledge-production context. Importantly, this structure becomes visible only when editorial roles are broken down into parts: an analysis at the level of overall board composition would show the undifferentiated picture that Acker's framework predicts organizations create to naturalize these roles.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe theoretical connection to Daniels (1987) and Star and Strauss (1999) enhances this interpretation. Daniels described a key feature of invisible work: it is considered essential when absent but not acknowledged as work when present. The language editor, the submission coordinator, and the statistics reviewer: each is quickly missed when the role is unfilled, yet each rarely results in a formal publication credit, an h-index contribution, or a line in the CV of the person doing it. Star and Strauss (1999) defined the concept as articulation work\u0026mdash;the work that \"gets things back on track\" in organizational settings, invisible to rational models of work because it forms the background for all visible activity. We do not directly measure invisibility as a subjective experience or as a formal reward outcome; rather, we use the invisible labor framework to interpret a role structure in which sustaining work carries lower formal authority \u0026mdash; and is less legible to the board-composition metrics through which editorial equity is typically assessed. This has a direct methodological implication: indicators built around overall board presence will undercount the role-level asymmetry this study documents, precisely because they cannot distinguish between roles that differ in authority.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe connection between academic service burden research and this argument deepens and clarifies it. O'Meara et al. (2017), referencing Acker's (1990) framework and using time-diary data from research university faculty, demonstrated that women faculty receive more work requests than men, and that these requests differ systematically: women are more often assigned what the authors, citing Acker and Dillabough (2007), call organizational housekeeping\u0026mdash;tasks broadly defined as unskilled, local, and low-prestige\u0026mdash;while men are more likely to be assigned problem-solving, visioning, and strategic planning tasks. The parallel with operational roles in journal publishing is suggestive. The operational editorial duties identified here\u0026mdash;reviewer coordination, workflow management, handling editor functions\u0026mdash;are akin to academic housekeeping in the journal context: vital to the production process but offering limited gatekeeping authority and little capacity to build the symbolic capital that boosts academic careers. This finding does not claim to be identical to the literature on campus service burdens; instead, it develops its own framework. The same organizational logic that guides women toward local, maintenance-focused academic work seems to operate within the editorial ecosystems those academics maintain. For research on editorial boards, this similarity has a direct measurement implication: overall board-composition metrics are to role stratification what department-level headcounts are to faculty workload distribution\u0026mdash;the appropriate unit of analysis for one question, but not for the other.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThis dual structure\u0026mdash;executive exclusion combined with operational absorption\u0026mdash;has often been concealed in previous editorial gender research, as we discuss in the next section. We should emphasize its implications for understanding gender equity in editorial practice. Ridgeway and Correll (2004) argued that hegemonic gender beliefs act as background identities in social-relational contexts, shaping evaluations and role assignments in ways that are often implicit but cumulative. A journal where women are well represented in operational and support roles, while men occupy the editor-in-chief position, should not automatically be considered gender-equitable: such a setup may show representation but still sustain authority disparities, with women's greater presence in supporting roles normalizing, rather than challenging, their exclusion from formal power positions.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe Aggregation Trap\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eAddressing RQ3, a substantial proportion of the editorial gender research literature operationalizes gender representation at the level of the \"editorial board,\" either as an undifferentiated category or by distinguishing only between the editor-in-chief and all other board members (Goyanes et al., 2025; Haeffel et al., 2024; Pinho-Gomes et al., 2021; Wang et al., 2024). Pooling executive, operational, support, and symbolic roles into a single representation indicator cancels out the opposing directional effects documented here. Model 1d, which replicates this aggregated approach by combining executive and operational roles into a single, broad gatekeeping outcome, yields an insignificant gender coefficient (OR\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;1.023, p = .361). The proportional odds model (Model 2) tests whether gender predicts position in the full role hierarchy and produces a null result. The likelihood ratio test against a fully unconstrained non-parallel model confirms that this null result is not a statistical artifact: the proportionality assumption holds for gender, and the null reflects genuine cancellation of opposing role-specific effects. Just as studies of faculty workload that rely on coarse categories\u0026mdash;courses taught and publications completed\u0026mdash;systematically miss the smaller, distributed service tasks that constitute most of the gendered workload differential documented by O'Meara et al. (2017), aggregated editorial board measures miss the role-level heterogeneity that is precisely where gender stratification operates.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThis is not merely a measurement artifact. It is a substantively consequential misspecification. An institution monitoring its editorial gender equity through aggregate board-composition metrics will observe approximate parity and may incorrectly conclude that no structural intervention is required (Wu et al., 2020). The present findings suggest that aggregate metrics are likely to understate executive exclusion and to render operational and support overrepresentation invisible. Gender equity interventions focused solely on increasing women's overall board presence may therefore leave the underlying role stratification intact\u0026mdash;or could even worsen it by adding women to sustaining positions to meet representation targets.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe methodological implication is direct: role-disaggregated analysis is a necessary condition for robust inference about editorial gender equity in role-differentiated settings. The four-category typology developed here\u0026mdash;executive, operational, support, and symbolic\u0026mdash;is applicable wherever a platform-based editorial system standardizes role assignments in ways that permit mapping onto differentiated authority structures. The DergiPark architecture makes this derivation unusually transparent, but the typological logic applies to any editorial management system that separates decision authority from workflow coordination. We suggest that future editorial gender studies adopt role-disaggregated designs as standard and that meta-analytic work in this domain weight findings accordingly.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eDisciplinary Amplification\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eRole stratification varies across different disciplinary fields. The significant gender \u0026times; STEM interactions in both the operational model (OR\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;0.718, p = .005) and the broad gatekeeping model (OR\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;0.752, p = .013) show that disciplinary context influences, but does not remove, gender stratification. In STEM journals, the female advantage in operational role occupancy decreases by about 22\u0026ndash;28% compared to the Social Sciences baseline, and this pattern is consistent in both models. Women in STEM editorial settings appear to be distributed across a narrower range of active editorial roles than their counterparts in other fields \u0026mdash; they are less likely to reach executive positions or hold operational roles at rates like those in Social Sciences or Mixed/Interdisciplinary journals. The attenuation of the executive gender gap in Mixed/Interdisciplinary journals (OR\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;1.823, p = .040) suggests that disciplinary context can moderate gender stratification in both directions\u0026mdash;amplifying it in STEM and partially attenuating it in interdisciplinary settings\u0026mdash;though neither interaction fully offsets the main executive exclusion effect.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThis finding aligns with extensive research showing that STEM is a highly status-based discipline. Larivi\u0026egrave;re et al. (2013) found that gender gaps in authorship are larger in physical and natural sciences compared to social sciences or humanities. Lerback and Hanson (2017) reported that STEM journals invite fewer women as peer reviewers relative to their presence in those fields. Although these studies do not directly examine how editorial roles are assigned, they suggest that STEM fields often display stronger gender-based sorting in recognition, evaluation, and access to prestigious professional roles. Ridgeway and Correll (2004) proposed that gender beliefs act as background identities in social contexts, providing a mechanism: when activities central to a setting are culturally gender-typed\u0026mdash;like technical skills in STEM\u0026mdash;hegemonic beliefs about men's greater status and competence tend to bias role allocation, influencing who is considered for editorial positions. Supporting this idea, Correll et al. (2007) showed that individuals in lower-status social groups face stricter evaluation standards, even when their qualifications are equal; those in higher-status groups are more likely to receive the benefit of the doubt. While our observational design cannot directly isolate evaluative mechanisms, the STEM interaction pattern is consistent with status-based allocation processes operating more strongly in technically gender-typed disciplinary environments.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003ePlatform Standardization as a Methodological Contribution\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eBeyond the substantive findings, this study illustrates the analytical value of national platform-based data infrastructures for research on editorial work. The main methodological challenge in this area has been the inconsistency of role labels across publishers, journals, and disciplines: an 'Associate Editor' at one journal might perform functions like a 'Section Editor' or 'Handling Editor' at another. Comparative studies that combine these labels create systematic measurement error, especially at the boundary between executive authority and operational support\u0026mdash;precisely where gender stratification has the most impact.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eDergiPark's UDS architecture addresses this issue structurally. Since editorial roles are implemented as system permission sets rather than journal-specific titles, the connection between observed role labels and their functional categories is more directly grounded in the platform's workflow logic than in journal conventions. This method does not remove interpretive decisions\u0026mdash;the thesaurus role created for this study involved 2,698 mapping choices across Turkish and English labels\u0026mdash;but it limits the researcher's interpretive freedom by offering a shared operational reference point. Platform architecture requires users to make classification choices that are neither automatic nor obvious, and it increases the extent to which those choices are constrained by external factors.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThis capability is not a feature unique to DergiPark. Finland's Journal.fi and Sweden's Publicera platform, both operating on a comparable national OJS-based architecture (P\u0026ouml;l\u0026ouml;nen, Syrj\u0026auml;m\u0026auml;ki, et al., 2021), provide similar infrastructural conditions for role-disaggregated editorial research. The present study offers a proof of concept for what comparative platform research could accomplish: a study linking DergiPark, Journal.fi, and Publicera data could, in principle, differentiate the effects of disciplinary culture, institutional context, and platform governance on editorial gender stratification with a level of specificity that no single-platform study can provide. We see this study as a promising direction for the next generation of editorial labor research, one that considers platform infrastructure as an independent variable rather than just a background condition.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eLimitations and Future Directions\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eSeveral limitations of the present study warrant acknowledgement. First, the data are cross-sectional: the analysis captures role distribution at a single point (December 2025) and cannot speak to whether the observed patterns reflect stable structural features or a transitional moment. Longitudinal data tracking role assignments across the platform's full operational history would be necessary to assess whether the gender gaps documented here are widening, stable, or narrowing.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eSecond, gender was inferred from given names using a country-contextual classifier. While coverage was high (96%) and the Turkish name pool is strongly sex-differentiated, name-based gender inference is a proxy for self-identified gender and does not capture non-binary identities. Third, the ceiling rule applied to individuals with multiple roles yields conservative estimates of overrepresentation in operational and support categories: people listed as both a board member and a section editor are categorized as operational, which underestimates how many women members hold multiple roles across the hierarchy. The current design does not fully capture this accumulation. Using a multi-membership model that considers each person\u0026ndash;role pair as a separate observation would address this issue but would also increase the complexity of the clustering structure.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eFourth, the study does not directly examine the mechanisms behind the observed patterns. Although the finding that women are more likely to hold operational and support roles aligns with the idea that work supporting women is structurally allocated, it could also be due to unmeasured factors like different preferences, availability, or network-based selection processes. Experimental research on status-based evaluation\u0026mdash;including Correll et al.'s (2007) demonstration that equally qualified candidates face stricter competence standards when in lower-status roles\u0026mdash;illustrates how evaluative biases can create systematic role differences even without explicit intent. Our observational approach cannot directly identify these evaluative mechanisms, and distinguishing between structural allocation and status-based evaluation remains an open empirical question in this area.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eFinally, the Turkish academic publishing ecosystem has unique features\u0026mdash;such as the centralized platform governance of T\u0026Uuml;BİTAK-ULAKBİM and the indexing incentives of TR Dizin, which followed the post-2010 growth in journal count\u0026mdash;that may limit how easily findings can be applied to other national contexts. We argue that DergiPark represents an analytically clear rather than typical case for studying editorial labor: its infrastructural transparency makes mechanisms detectable that would otherwise be hidden. Cross-platform comparative research\u0026mdash;extending the analytical framework created here to Journal.fi, Publicera, and eventually to major international publishers whose editorial management systems allow role-level data extraction\u0026mdash;remains a crucial next step for testing the generalizability of the dual mechanism documented in this study.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"Conclusion","content":"\u003cp\u003eAnalyzing 38,241 person\u0026ndash;journal observations across 1,549 DergiPark journals, this study indicates a dual mechanism shaping the gendered distribution of editorial labor. Women are significantly less likely than men with similar academic rank and institutional profiles to hold executive editorial roles (OR\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;0.583, AME\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;\u0026minus;\u0026thinsp;1.63 pp), indicating a deficit of approximately 48% at the highest editorial level. At the same time, women are more likely to take on operational roles that handle the editorial process (OR\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;1.090, AME\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;+\u0026thinsp;1.78 pp) and support roles that provide technical and linguistic services essential for publication (OR\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;1.151, AME\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;+\u0026thinsp;0.88 pp). Both effects remain consistent after accounting for academic rank, indicating they are not solely due to credential differences between men and women. Executive segregation and operational absorption are not opposite ends of a single spectrum: they are two concurrent mechanisms, operating in opposite directions, that together create a gendered division of editorial labor.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe most consequential analytical finding may be a null result. When executive and operational roles are pooled into a single gatekeeping indicator\u0026mdash;mirroring the dominant operationalization in prior literature\u0026mdash;the gender coefficient becomes non-significant (OR\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;1.023, p = .361), and the proportional odds model across the full role hierarchy yields the same result. These nulls are not failures of detection; they result from genuine cancellation, as confirmed by the likelihood ratio test against a fully unconstrained model. The null result is therefore not evidence of equity: it is evidence that aggregated editorial board metrics structurally conceal the two opposing mechanisms this study isolates. An institution monitoring gender equity through aggregate board composition will observe approximate parity. It may conclude that no intervention is needed, precisely because the measure it uses cannot, by design, detect the problem. Role-disaggregated analysis is not a refinement; it is a precondition for valid inference.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eTaken together, the findings reframe the question that editorial gender research has been asking. The relevant gap exists at all levels, even though the executive deficit is significant and remains after accounting for rank. It is also present in the structure of labor below the top: in who coordinates the reviewers, processes the manuscripts, and maintains the workflow that enables editorial decisions. Drawing on Acker's (1990) analysis of gendered organizations, Daniels' (1987) conceptualization of invisible work, and O'Meara et al.'s (2017) documentation of organizational housekeeping in academic settings, this study suggests that journal publishing reproduces a familiar structural logic\u0026mdash;sustaining work is disproportionately performed by women and carries limited formal authority and reduced scholarly visibility within the role structures this platform makes legible. Women listed on editorial boards are present, but their presence is not equal. The roles they mainly hold are visible in platform records; however, whether that visibility leads to scholarly recognition, citation, or career progress remains beyond this study's scope to determine. What the data do establish is the structure of resource distribution: visibility does not equal credit.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"Declarations","content":"\u003cp\u003eData Availability\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe dataset and all supplementary materials supporting the findings of this study are publicly available on the OSF (https://osf.io/sxmyb/overview?view_only=527f5172d57a4004bab5b39f5caf0e0f)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFunding Declaration\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAuthor Contributions\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eKemal Yayla: Conceptualization, Methodology, Data curation, Formal analysis, Writing \u0026ndash; original draft\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eŞehnaz Ceylan: Conceptualization, Writing \u0026ndash; original draft, Writing \u0026ndash; review \u0026amp; editing.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"References","content":"\u003col\u003e\n \u003cli\u003eAcker, J. 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Does the Institutional Diversity of Editorial Boards Increase Journal Quality? The Case Economics Field. \u003cem\u003eScientometrics\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e124\u003c/em\u003e(2), 1579\u0026ndash;1597. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-020-03505-6\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ol\u003e"}],"fulltextSource":"","fullText":"","funders":[],"hasAdminPriorityOnWorkflow":false,"hasManuscriptDocX":true,"hasOptedInToPreprint":true,"hasPassedJournalQc":"","hasAnyPriority":false,"hideJournal":true,"highlight":"","institution":"","isAcceptedByJournal":false,"isAuthorSuppliedPdf":false,"isDeskRejected":"","isHiddenFromSearch":false,"isInQc":false,"isInWorkflow":false,"isPdf":false,"isPdfUpToDate":true,"isWithdrawnOrRetracted":false,"journal":{"display":true,"email":"[email protected]","identity":"researchsquare","isNatureJournal":false,"hasQc":true,"allowDirectSubmit":true,"externalIdentity":"","sideBox":"","snPcode":"","submissionUrl":"/submission","title":"Research Square","twitterHandle":"researchsquare","acdcEnabled":true,"dfaEnabled":false,"editorialSystem":"","reportingPortfolio":"","inReviewEnabled":false,"inReviewRevisionsEnabled":true},"keywords":"gender inequality, editorial boards, role stratification, invisible labor, platform-based scholarly publishing, Dergipark","lastPublishedDoi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-9152762/v1","lastPublishedDoiUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-9152762/v1","license":{"name":"CC BY 4.0","url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"},"manuscriptAbstract":"\u003cp\u003eEditorial board research has consistently documented women's underrepresentation in journal leadership, but most studies measure representation through aggregate board composition or editor-in-chief counts alone. This approach conflates participation with stratification: if roles carrying different levels of authority are pooled into a single indicator, opposing distributional patterns can cancel each other out, producing a misleading appearance of parity. This study examines how editorial roles are distributed by gender across a national platform-based journal system. Analyzing 38,241 person–journal observations from 1,549 DergiPark journals, we estimate logistic and proportional-odds regression models to distinguish four role categories—executive, operational, support, and symbolic—and report average marginal effects with individual-level cluster-robust standard errors. Women are significantly less likely to hold executive editorial positions (OR = 0.583, AME = −1.63 pp) and more likely to occupy operational (OR = 1.090, AME = +1.78 pp) and support roles (OR = 1.151, AME = +0.88 pp), conditional on academic rank, disciplinary context, and institutional visibility. When these roles are aggregated into a single gatekeeping indicator, the gender coefficient becomes non-significant—not because stratification is absent, but because opposing effects cancel each other out. Role-disaggregated analysis is therefore a necessary condition for valid inference about editorial gender equity in role-differentiated settings. The findings also demonstrate that platform-standardized editorial metadata enables role-level comparisons that fragmented publisher environments cannot support.\u003c/p\u003e","manuscriptTitle":"Presence Is Not Parity, Visibility Is Not Credit: Gendered Hierarchies in Platform- Based Academic Publishing","msid":"","msnumber":"","nonDraftVersions":[{"code":1,"date":"2026-04-09 07:43:29","doi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-9152762/v1","editorialEvents":[{"type":"communityComments","content":0}],"status":"published","journal":{"display":true,"email":"[email protected]","identity":"researchsquare","isNatureJournal":false,"hasQc":true,"allowDirectSubmit":true,"externalIdentity":"","sideBox":"","snPcode":"","submissionUrl":"/submission","title":"Research Square","twitterHandle":"researchsquare","acdcEnabled":true,"dfaEnabled":false,"editorialSystem":"","reportingPortfolio":"","inReviewEnabled":false,"inReviewRevisionsEnabled":true}}],"origin":"","ownerIdentity":"2b7b8dd1-84df-4ec3-9ca4-5dcb61732bf3","owner":[],"postedDate":"April 9th, 2026","published":true,"recentEditorialEvents":[],"rejectedJournal":[],"revision":"","amendment":"","status":"posted","subjectAreas":[],"tags":[],"updatedAt":"2026-04-09T07:43:30+00:00","versionOfRecord":[],"versionCreatedAt":"2026-04-09 07:43:29","video":"","vorDoi":"","vorDoiUrl":"","workflowStages":[]},"version":"v1","identity":"rs-9152762","journalConfig":"researchsquare"},"__N_SSP":true},"page":"/article/[identity]/[[...version]]","query":{"redirect":"/article/rs-9152762","identity":"rs-9152762","version":["v1"]},"buildId":"XKTyCvWXoU3ODBz1xrDgd","isFallback":false,"isExperimentalCompile":false,"dynamicIds":[84888],"gssp":true,"scriptLoader":[]}