Editorial boards play a key role in the production, dissemination, and promotion of scientific knowledge. The cross-presence of scholars in different journals, known as editorial board interlocking, maps the connections between such bodies of governance. Former research on this topic is typically restricted to individual disciplines and has failed to consider the relevance of potential interlocking between related, but different academic fields. Further, although existing studies note a significant lack of diversity in editorial board representation, they mainly focus on a single dimension, such as gender or geography. This study addressed these knowledge gaps by offering a complex cross-disciplinary approach to the geographical, gender, and institutional compositions of editorial boards, with a specific emphasis on within- and between-fields editorial board interlocking. We used graph and social network analysis to examine editorial board connections between 281 top journals (13,084 members and 17,092 connections) of six disciplines: communication, psychology, political science, sociology, economics, and management. We found substantial differences in terms of field connections, ranging from sociology with 42% interlocking with other fields, to management with only 11%. Psychology is significantly less connected to the other five disciplines. The results also show a clear overrepresentation of American institutions and native English-speaking countries in all fields, with Harvard, Columbia, Cornell, Stanford, UC Berkeley, and New York University forming a well-connected central cluster. Although female scholars are underrepresented, there are no significant differences in terms of positioning in the network. Female scholars are even employed in more central positions than male scholars in psychology, sociology, and management. Our findings extend the literature on editorial board diversity by evidencing a significant imbalance in their gender, geographical, institutional representation, and interlocking editorship both within and between fields.

Filtering strategies enable social media users to remove undesired content from their feeds, potentially creating homophilic environments. Although previous studies have addressed the individual-level factors and content features that influence these decisions, few have solely focused on users’ perceptions. Accordingly, this study applies social exchange theory to understand how users socially construct the process of unfriending. Based on 30 in-depth interviews with young Spaniards, we identify a widespread pattern of rejection over repetitive, opinion-challenging, and offensive posts, which we conceptualize as out-of-place content, a type of social media stimulus that hinders substantive online exchanges and challenges users’ understanding of social reality and individual values. This study contributes to current literature on unfriending by suggesting that filtering strategies are implemented gradually when posts overwhelm users’ tolerance threshold. Our findings also suggest that their deployment hinges on the closeness of the relationship between peers and social commitments formed in specific platforms. Future research is needed to assess to what extent the patterns identified in our interviews are present in the overall population.