S1497
Interdisciplinary - Public engagement and visibility of radiotherapy
ESTRO 2026
Lake City, Utah, USA. 3 Department of Radiation Oncology, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, USA. 4 Department of Radiation Oncology, The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center, Columbus, Ohio, USA. 5 Department of Human Structure and Repair, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium. 6 Department of Radiation Oncology, Iridium Network, Antwerp, Belgium. 7 Department of Radiation Oncology, University Hospital Zurich and the University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland. 8 Radiation Oncology Branch, National Cancer Institute, National Institute of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, USA. 9 Department of Radiation Oncology, West Virginia University Cancer Institute, Camden Clark Medical Center, Parkersburg, West Virginia, USA Purpose/Objective: High-impact factor (IF) journals drive knowledge dissemination in oncology. Although radiotherapy is used in nearly half of curative oncologic treatments, radiation oncologists (RO) remain underrepresented in key roles, such as on clinical practice guideline committees1,2. This study aimed to quantify the representation of RO on editorial review boards of high-IF journals and to assess its association with the proportion of recent radiotherapy-specific publications. Material/Methods: A systematic search of the Clarivate Journal Citation Reports database was conducted to identify journals under the “oncology” category with a 5-year IF ≥ 10. Additional high-IF journals not deemed oncology- specific by Clarivate were also included if a fast-track publication partnership existed with a major oncology conference between 2020-2025. The top ten oncology conferences by attendance were identified via an online clinical oncology intelligence database, LARVOL3. Editorial board members were categorized by primary specialty and/or professional background into six groups: RO, hematology/medical oncology (H/MO), surgical oncology (SO), other physicians (OP), non-physician doctorates (NPD), and non-doctorate scientific journalists (SJ). A corresponding systematic review of each journal using PubMed/EMBASE was conducted to identify the total number of publications from 2020-2025 and the fraction which were related to radiotherapy, using prespecified search criteria. The association between the proportion of radiotherapy- specific publications and RO editorial board representation was assessed with Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient (rho) and reported with the corresponding 95% confidence interval (CI). Results: Forty journals met the inclusion criteria, including 33 oncology-specific journals. These included 3,041 editorial review board members, with RO accounting
for 2.6% (n = 80). Amongst other disciplines, H/MO comprised 33.6%, NPD 30.8%, OP 19.2%, SO 7.3%, SJ 4.1%, and 2.3% had an unknown professional background (Figure 1). Radiotherapy-specific publications accounted for 2.3% (n = 1,997/85,294) of overall publications. A positive association between RO editorial board composition and the proportion of radiotherapy-specific publications was observed (Spearman’s rho = 0.74 [95 CI: 0.55 – 0.85]; Figure 2). Figure 1
Figure 2
Conclusion: Radiation oncology remains underrepresented on the editorial boards of high-IF journals, including both oncology-specific and other high-impact journals associated with major annual oncology conferences. This underrepresentation appears to be associated with a dearth of radiotherapy-specific publications. This disparity may limit the dissemination of radiotherapy research in the broader oncology literature. Increasing the diversity of editorial boards may help ensure balanced representation across cancer disciplines and promote equitable
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