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Peer review and gender bias: A study on 145 scholarly journals
Scholarly journals are often blamed for a gender gap in publication rates, but it is unclear whether peer review and editorial processes contribute to it. This article examines gender bias in peer review with data for 145 journals in various fields of research, including about 1.7 million authors an...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
American Association for the Advancement of Science
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7787493/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33523967 http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abd0299 |
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author | Squazzoni, Flaminio Bravo, Giangiacomo Farjam, Mike Marusic, Ana Mehmani, Bahar Willis, Michael Birukou, Aliaksandr Dondio, Pierpaolo Grimaldo, Francisco |
author_facet | Squazzoni, Flaminio Bravo, Giangiacomo Farjam, Mike Marusic, Ana Mehmani, Bahar Willis, Michael Birukou, Aliaksandr Dondio, Pierpaolo Grimaldo, Francisco |
author_sort | Squazzoni, Flaminio |
collection | PubMed |
description | Scholarly journals are often blamed for a gender gap in publication rates, but it is unclear whether peer review and editorial processes contribute to it. This article examines gender bias in peer review with data for 145 journals in various fields of research, including about 1.7 million authors and 740,000 referees. We reconstructed three possible sources of bias, i.e., the editorial selection of referees, referee recommendations, and editorial decisions, and examined all their possible relationships. Results showed that manuscripts written by women as solo authors or coauthored by women were treated even more favorably by referees and editors. Although there were some differences between fields of research, our findings suggest that peer review and editorial processes do not penalize manuscripts by women. However, increasing gender diversity in editorial teams and referee pools could help journals inform potential authors about their attention to these factors and so stimulate participation by women. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-7787493 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | American Association for the Advancement of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-77874932021-01-14 Peer review and gender bias: A study on 145 scholarly journals Squazzoni, Flaminio Bravo, Giangiacomo Farjam, Mike Marusic, Ana Mehmani, Bahar Willis, Michael Birukou, Aliaksandr Dondio, Pierpaolo Grimaldo, Francisco Sci Adv Research Articles Scholarly journals are often blamed for a gender gap in publication rates, but it is unclear whether peer review and editorial processes contribute to it. This article examines gender bias in peer review with data for 145 journals in various fields of research, including about 1.7 million authors and 740,000 referees. We reconstructed three possible sources of bias, i.e., the editorial selection of referees, referee recommendations, and editorial decisions, and examined all their possible relationships. Results showed that manuscripts written by women as solo authors or coauthored by women were treated even more favorably by referees and editors. Although there were some differences between fields of research, our findings suggest that peer review and editorial processes do not penalize manuscripts by women. However, increasing gender diversity in editorial teams and referee pools could help journals inform potential authors about their attention to these factors and so stimulate participation by women. American Association for the Advancement of Science 2021-01-06 /pmc/articles/PMC7787493/ /pubmed/33523967 http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abd0299 Text en Copyright © 2021 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License 4.0 (CC BY-NC). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) , which permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, so long as the resultant use is not for commercial advantage and provided the original work is properly cited. |
spellingShingle | Research Articles Squazzoni, Flaminio Bravo, Giangiacomo Farjam, Mike Marusic, Ana Mehmani, Bahar Willis, Michael Birukou, Aliaksandr Dondio, Pierpaolo Grimaldo, Francisco Peer review and gender bias: A study on 145 scholarly journals |
title | Peer review and gender bias: A study on 145 scholarly journals |
title_full | Peer review and gender bias: A study on 145 scholarly journals |
title_fullStr | Peer review and gender bias: A study on 145 scholarly journals |
title_full_unstemmed | Peer review and gender bias: A study on 145 scholarly journals |
title_short | Peer review and gender bias: A study on 145 scholarly journals |
title_sort | peer review and gender bias: a study on 145 scholarly journals |
topic | Research Articles |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7787493/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33523967 http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abd0299 |
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