How international are the leading orthopedic journals: a look at the composition of the editorial board members of the top orthopedic journals.

Background: Researches from the developing world contribute only a limited proportion to the total research output published in leading orthopedics journals. Some of them believe that there is substantial editorial bias against their work. We assessed the composition of the editorial boards of leading orthopedic journals. Methods: The editorial boards of 18 leading orthopedic journals according to their impact factor were retrieved from their website. We evaluated in which countries the editorial board members were based and classified these countries using the World Bank income criteria. Results: Individuals from number of countries can be found on the editorial boards of the investigated journals, but most of them are based in high-income countries. While 1,302 of the 1,401 editorial board members are based in countries with a high income according to the World Bank criteria, 37 are based in an upper middle income, 2 in lower middle income and none in a low-income economy. Conclusion: The percentage of editorial board members in leading orthopedic journals is dominated by high-income countries with serious underrepresentation from low-income countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]