IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0294805.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Gender imbalances in the editorial activities of a selective journal run by academic editors

Author

Listed:
  • Tal Seidel Malkinson
  • Devin B Terhune
  • Mathew Kollamkulam
  • Maria J Guerreiro
  • Dani S Bassett
  • Tamar R Makin

Abstract

The fairness of decisions made at various stages of the publication process is an important topic in meta-research. Here, based on an analysis of data on the gender of authors, editors and reviewers for 23,876 initial submissions and 7,192 full submissions to the journal eLife, we report on five stages of the publication process. We find that the board of reviewing editors (BRE) is men-dominant (69%) and that authors disproportionately suggest male editors when making an initial submission. We do not find evidence for gender bias when Senior Editors consult Reviewing Editors about initial submissions, but women Reviewing Editors are less engaged in discussions about these submissions than expected by their proportion. We find evidence of gender homophily when Senior Editors assign full submissions to Reviewing Editors (i.e., men are more likely to assign full submissions to other men (77% compared to the base assignment rate to men RE of 70%), and likewise for women (41% compared to women RE base assignment rate of 30%))). This tendency was stronger in more gender-balanced scientific disciplines. However, we do not find evidence for gender bias when authors appeal decisions made by editors to reject submissions. Together, our findings confirm that gender disparities exist along the editorial process and suggest that merely increasing the proportion of women might not be sufficient to eliminate this bias. Measures accounting for women’s circumstances and needs (e.g., delaying discussions until all RE are engaged) and raising editorial awareness to women’s needs may be essential to increasing gender equity and enhancing academic publication.

Suggested Citation

  • Tal Seidel Malkinson & Devin B Terhune & Mathew Kollamkulam & Maria J Guerreiro & Dani S Bassett & Tamar R Makin, 2023. "Gender imbalances in the editorial activities of a selective journal run by academic editors," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 18(12), pages 1-23, December.
  • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0294805
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0294805
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0294805
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0294805&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0294805?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lynne A Isbell & Truman P Young & Alexander H Harcourt, 2012. "Stag Parties Linger: Continued Gender Bias in a Female-Rich Scientific Discipline," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 7(11), pages 1-4, November.
    2. Kwiek, Marek & Roszka, Wojciech, 2021. "Gender-based homophily in research: A large-scale study of man-woman collaboration," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 15(3).
    3. Krawczyk, Michał & Smyk, Magdalena, 2016. "Author׳s gender affects rating of academic articles: Evidence from an incentivized, deception-free laboratory experiment," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 326-335.
    4. Matthew B. Ross & Britta M. Glennon & Raviv Murciano-Goroff & Enrico G. Berkes & Bruce A. Weinberg & Julia I. Lane, 2023. "Author Correction: Women are credited less in science than men," Nature, Nature, vol. 621(7979), pages 41-41, September.
    5. Luke Holman & Devi Stuart-Fox & Cindy E Hauser, 2018. "The gender gap in science: How long until women are equally represented?," PLOS Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(4), pages 1-20, April.
    6. Cassandra M. Guarino & Victor M. H. Borden, 2017. "Faculty Service Loads and Gender: Are Women Taking Care of the Academic Family?," Research in Higher Education, Springer;Association for Institutional Research, vol. 58(6), pages 672-694, September.
    7. Link, Albert N. & Swann, Christopher A. & Bozeman, Barry, 2008. "A time allocation study of university faculty," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 27(4), pages 363-374, August.
    8. Christine Wennerås & Agnes Wold, 1997. "Nepotism and sexism in peer-review," Nature, Nature, vol. 387(6631), pages 341-343, May.
    9. Ann Brower & Alex James, 2020. "Research performance and age explain less than half of the gender pay gap in New Zealand universities," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(1), pages 1-13, January.
    10. Jevin D West & Jennifer Jacquet & Molly M King & Shelley J Correll & Carl T Bergstrom, 2013. "The Role of Gender in Scholarly Authorship," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(7), pages 1-6, July.
    11. Cary Wu & Sylvia Fuller & Zhilei Shi & Rima Wilkes, 2020. "The gender gap in commenting: Women are less likely than men to comment on (men’s) published research," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(4), pages 1-15, April.
    12. Julian Kolev & Yuly Fuentes-Medel & Fiona Murray, 2019. "Is Blinded Review Enough? How Gendered Outcomes Arise Even Under Anonymous Evaluation," NBER Working Papers 25759, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. repec:osf:socarx:w34pr_v1 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Nakajima, Kazuki & Liu, Ruodan & Shudo, Kazuyuki & Masuda, Naoki, 2023. "Quantifying gender imbalance in East Asian academia: Research career and citation practice," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 17(4).
    3. Magdalena Formanowicz & Marta Witkowska & Weronika Hryniszak & Zuzanna Jakubik & Aleksandra Cisłak, 2023. "Gender bias in special issues: evidence from a bibliometric analysis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(4), pages 2283-2299, April.
    4. Kwiek, Marek & Szymula, Łukasz, 2024. "Growth of Science and Women: Methodological Challenges of Using Structured Big Data," SocArXiv w34pr, Center for Open Science.
    5. Lokman Tutuncu & Rahman Dag, 2024. "A gender gap in the manuscript review time of Turkish national journals?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 129(12), pages 7783-7803, December.
    6. Pat O’Connor & Gemma Irvine, 2020. "Multi-Level State Interventions and Gender Equality in Higher Education Institutions: The Irish Case," Administrative Sciences, MDPI, vol. 10(4), pages 1-21, December.
    7. Friederike Mengel & Jan Sauermann & Ulf Zölitz, 2019. "Gender Bias in Teaching Evaluations," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 17(2), pages 535-566.
    8. repec:osf:socarx:4z6w8_v1 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Matthias Kuppler, 2022. "Predicting the future impact of Computer Science researchers: Is there a gender bias?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(11), pages 6695-6732, November.
    10. Emre Özel, 2024. "What is Gender Bias in Grant Peer review?," Working Papers halshs-03862027, HAL.
    11. Lin Zhang & Yuanyuan Shang & Ying Huang & Gunnar Sivertsen, 2022. "Gender differences among active reviewers: an investigation based on publons," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(1), pages 145-179, January.
    12. Wenxuan Shi & Renli Wu, 2024. "Women’s strength in science: exploring the influence of female participation on research impact and innovation," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 129(7), pages 4529-4551, July.
    13. Fengyuan Liu & Petter Holme & Matteo Chiesa & Bedoor AlShebli & Talal Rahwan, 2023. "Gender inequality and self-publication are common among academic editors," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 7(3), pages 353-364, March.
    14. Zhang, Lin & Shang, Yuanyuan & HUANG, Ying & Sivertsen, Gunnar, 2021. "Gender differences among active reviewers: an investigation based on Publons," SocArXiv 4z6w8, Center for Open Science.
    15. Ji-Young Son & Michelle L. Bell, 2022. "Scientific authorship by gender: trends before and during a global pandemic," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 9(1), pages 1-10, December.
    16. Mancuso, Raffaele & Rossi-Lamastra, Cristina & Franzoni, Chiara, 2023. "Topic choice, gendered language, and the under-funding of female scholars in mission-oriented research," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 52(6).
    17. Arjun Prakash & Jeevan John Varghese & Shruti Aggarwal, 2024. "Gender of gender studies: examining regional and gender-based disparities in scholarly publications," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 129(7), pages 4471-4493, July.
    18. Gabriela Fontanarrosa & Lucía Zarbá & Valeria Aschero & Daniel Andrés Dos Santos & María Gabriela Nuñez Montellano & Maia C Plaza Behr & Natalia Schroeder & Silvia Beatriz Lomáscolo & María Elisa Fanj, 2024. "Over twenty years of publications in Ecology: Over-contribution of women reveals a new dimension of gender bias," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 19(9), pages 1-18, September.
    19. Michele Pezzoni & Fabiana Visentin, 2024. "Gender bias in team formation: the case of the European Science Foundation’s grants," Science and Public Policy, Oxford University Press, vol. 51(2), pages 247-260.
    20. Sorana-Alexandra Constantinescu & Maria-Henriete Pozsar, 2022. "Was This Supposed to Be on the Test? Academic Leadership, Gender and the COVID-19 Pandemic in Denmark, Hungary, Romania, and United Kingdom," Publications, MDPI, vol. 10(2), pages 1-13, April.
    21. Zhang, Ming-Ze & Wang, Tang-Rong & Lyu, Peng-Hui & Chen, Qi-Mei & Li, Ze-Xia & Ngai, Eric W.T., 2024. "Impact of gender composition of academic teams on disruptive output," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 18(2).
    22. Alexander Tekles & Katrin Auspurg & Lutz Bornmann, 2022. "Same-gender citations do not indicate a substantial gender homophily bias," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 17(9), pages 1-12, September.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0294805. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.