Empowering Voices: How New Programs Can Influence Future Scientific Journal Editorial Boards

By Heather Smith

Women and members of minority groups are still grossly under-represented on scientific journal editorial boards throughout academia. There are few avenues for early career researchers to gain editorial experience and mentorship outside of academic writing. The question that stands is, what can be done? How are journals and academic spaces changing to break barriers and pave the way for early career, minority researchers to become a part of leadership?

Breaking Barriers through Mentorship

In 2022, The Anatomical Record (AR) launched a new Assistant Editor program aimed at mentoring early career researchers on how to act as handling editors for manuscripts submitted to a journal for review. Each Assistant Editor is paired with a senior Associate Editor who mentors them, helps them manage papers, and supports them in the new role. Together, the Assistant Editor and Mentor Editor share a single editor’s workload of papers to help ease the Assistant Editor into the process. The Editor-in-Chief also regularly meets with the Assistant Editors to provide additional mentorship and guide them in their professional development.

Uplifting the Next Generation of Scientific Journal Editors and Academic Writers

The first two participants in this program, Drs. Leonardo Kerber (Brazil) and Rachel Menegaz (USA) completed two full years of mentorship and guidance as Assistant Editors, and in 2024, they were promoted to full Associate Editors. Through this continued editorial mentorship program, we will train the next generation of skilled editors, help them achieve Associate Editor positions, and gain a more thorough understanding of the editorial process, which will help in their future reviews and manuscript submissions.

Introducing a New Cohort

AR is happy to welcome the second cohort of Assistant Editors into the program (Figure 1), Drs. Addison Kemp, Smart Mbagwu, and Karyn Jourdeuil. Dr. Kemp is an Integrative Anatomical Sciences Assistant Professor at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine. Her research uses comparative morphological and experimental methods to understand how visual system adaptations impact mammals' locomotion, predation, and other ecologically essential tasks. Dr. Mbagwu is an Anatomy Lecturer at Nnamdi Azikiwe University (Nigeria). He is also a biomedical scientist whose research interests include neurobiology, immunology, and cell biology. Dr. Jourdeuil is a scientist at the National Institute on Deafness and other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). She is a developmental biologist whose research focuses on cell-cell interactions between neural crest and placode cells during craniofacial development and identifying conserved vs. species-specific gene regulatory elements (primarily using chick, mouse, and Xenopus laevis). Please join us in welcoming Drs. Kemp, Mbagwu, and Jourdeuil to the AR family!

Support is Essential for Growth

None of the programs created to support our historically underrepresented peers are possible without the engagement of readers and subscribers. We at The Anatomical Record encourage you to continue reading, sharing, and interacting with our articles and online content. We want to create space for diverse opinions, leadership, and writing to shape our community into a more inclusive and well-rounded platform for scientific discovery and research. Sign up to be an AAA member and gain access to AR along with our other two journals: Developmental Dynamics and Anatomical Sciences Education. 

About the American Association for Anatomy

The American Association for Anatomy is an international membership organization of biomedical researchers and educators specializing in the structural foundation of health and disease. We connect anatomists, neuroscientists, developmental biologists, biological anthropologists, cell biologists, and physical therapists to advance the anatomical sciences through research, education, and professional development. For more information visit anatomy.org or give us a call at (301) 634-7910.