Journal editors decide what gets published and what doesn't, affecting the careers of other academics and influencing the direction that a field takes.

You'd hope, then, that journals would do everything they can to establish a diverse editorial board, reflecting a variety of voices, experiences, and identities.

Unfortunately, a new study in Nature Neuroscience makes for disheartening reading.

The team finds that the majority of editors in top psychology and neuroscience journals are male and based in the United States: a situation that may be amplifying existing gender inequalities in the field and influencing the kind of research that gets published.

Men were found to account for 60% of the editors of psychology journals.

There were significantly more male than female editors at each level of seniority, and men made up the majority of editors in over three quarters of the journals.

Crucially, the proportion of female editors was significantly lower than the overall proportion of women psychology researchers.

The differences were even starker in the neuroscience journals: 70% of editors were male, and men held the majority of editorial positions in 88% of journals.

In this case, the proportion of female editors was not significantly lower than the proportion of female researchers working in neuroscience — a finding that reveals enduring gender disparities in the field more broadly.

Based on their results, the team concludes that "the ideas, values and decision-making biases of men are overrepresented in the editorial positions of the most recognized academic journals in psychology and neuroscience."