Authorship Concentration and Scientific Elite Dominance: Understanding Systemic Inequality in Academic Publishing

Abstract: Academic publishing faces a critical challenge that extends beyond demographic diversity: the systematic concentration of publication opportunities among a narrow scientific elite. This article examines authorship inequality as a structural disparity rather than merely a representational issue, drawing on six decades of publication patterns across management and organizational research fields. Evidence demonstrates that a small subset of scholars occupies disproportionate journal space, with concentration intensifying over time despite growing calls for diversity, equity, and inclusion. Industrial-Organizational Psychology exhibits particularly pronounced elite dominance, characterized by extreme upper-tail productivity, frequent author recurrence across journals, dense collaboration networks, and self-reinforcing publication structures. These patterns reflect systemic mechanisms—including cumulative advantage, network closure, and gatekeeping power—that privilege established scholars while constraining epistemic diversity. Understanding authorship concentration as a disparity issue, rather than solely a diversity concern, reveals how symbolic capital accumulates within closed networks, thereby reproducing hierarchies that diversity initiatives alone cannot dismantle. Addressing these structural inequalities requires moving beyond representational targets toward interventions that challenge cumulative advantage, disrupt network closure, and redistribute evaluative authority within scholarly publishing systems.

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