Social Sciences

#3 of 26

Editorial board composition

89,010
Positions
77,739
Editors
2,144
Journals
149
Countries
15.4
Mean h-index

Social Sciences ranks #3 among 26 fields. 89,010 positions across 2,144 journals. 77,739 editors. 44.1% female (above avg 33%). Mean h-index: 15.4 (below avg 22.5).

Gender distribution

Male
38,161
Female
30,051
Unknown
9,527

44.1% female · 55.9% male (of 68,212 resolved; global avg 33%)

Each editor counted once at this entity (composite identity key). Gender is inferred from the first name — not self-reported — and coverage drops for non-Latin-script names, which inflates the "unknown" bar in some countries.

Top countries

United States
26.2% 20,382
United Kingdom
9.4% 7,281
Australia
3.7% 2,913
Canada
3.0% 2,334
China
2.7% 2,128
Germany
2.1% 1,625
Italy
1.6% 1,261
The Netherlands
1.6% 1,238
India
1.3% 1,000
Spain
1.2% 911

Board diversity

Per-editor diversity indicators. Each editor is counted once (composite identity key). The Shannon columns use Pielou's normalisation J = H / ln(k) so values are comparable across entities with different numbers of categories. See the methodology for full definitions, use cases, and references (Shannon 1948; Pielou 1966; Jost 2006).

0.559
Pielou's J over ROR country distribution. 0 = all editors from one country, 1 = perfectly even across every country present. MDPI sits higher than Elsevier here; compare against the top-countries bar to see which countries drive the spread.
0.119
Pielou's J over the ROR org_type field (education, healthcare, facility, government, nonprofit, company, archive). Low values mean editors come overwhelmingly from one kind of institution — usually universities, which account for about 82% of editors dataset-wide. Higher values indicate editorial boards that reach into clinical practice, public labs, industry, or scientific societies.
25 yr
Median years since first OpenAlex-indexed publication, per unique editor. IQR 15–40 yr (spread 25 yr), mean 30.8 yr, n = 46,284. A low median with a small IQR indicates a board clustered in one career stage; a large IQR signals generational mix.