Scientometric Analysis of Chief Editors and Editorial Board Members of ISC Journals in Health Sciences, Life Sciences and Arts and Humanities

This study aimed at the scientometric analysis of chief editors and editorial board members of ISC journals in health sciences, life sciences, and humanities.

This study applied quantitative research, and it was done with scientometric indicators, including the "Editorial Board Interlocking (EBI)" and Social Network Analysis (SNA). To analyze the data, centrality indices and Excel, Python, SPSS, NetDraw and UCiNet software were used for pre-processing and analyzing data and drawing EBI maps. The research community is 200 journals and 2813 editorial board members (National and International) and chief editors.

In this study 13.08 percent of the editorial board members and 81.5 percent of the journals studied in this article have an "EBI." In the reviewed scientific journals, most editorial board members are "professors," and men cooperate with the journals of the research community almost six times more than women. The University of Tehran, the Ferdowsi University of Mashhad and Shahid Beheshti University, and Tehran, Qom and Khorasan Razavi provinces have gained the largest share in publishing journals. Despite six times more men than women, no statistically significant difference was observed between the "EBI" and the gender of editorial board members and chief editors. However, a statistically significant relationship exists between academic rank and the "EBI." "History of Philosophy," the core journal of Humanities and Arts, has first place among 163 interlocked journals with a degree centrality of 14. Regarding the closeness centrality of interlocked journals, it should be added that "Water and Soil" and "Soil Management and Sustainable Production" have obtained a closeness centrality index of 2738. The betweenness centrality section also indicated that the journals "Research in Rehabilitation Sciences (Health Sciences-Waiting List)," “Comparative Linguistics Research (Human Sciences and Art-Core List)" and "History of Philosophy (Human Sciences and Art-Core List)" respectively, have first to third place.

There is an "EBI" in Persian journals. In other words, several editorial board members and chief editors collaborate in several journals. Any increase in the amount of "EBI" means that people are involved in the policies of the journals, such as the publication of articles, refereeing processes and methods, the selection of referees, the proposal of unique articles, the proposal guest editor and many other vital items play a decisive role. The existence of the "EBI," especially the "EBI" with high frequencies, causes the journals of a subject area to adopt almost the same macro policies. In this way, the strategies, plannings, approaches and intellectual paradigms of a limited number of editorial board members, who, based on the results of this research, are primarily men, professors and members of the academic faculty of top universities, on Persian journals in the subject areas of humanities and Art has overshadowed Health Sciences and Life Sciences.