IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/tin/wpaper/20230044.html

Gender and the time cost of peer review

Author

Listed:
  • Diane Alexander

    (Wharton School)

  • Olga Gorelkina

    (University of Liverpool)

  • Erin Hengel

    (London School of Economics)

  • Richard Tol

    (University of Sussex)

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate one factor that can directly contribute to—as well as indirectly shed light on the other causes of—the gender gap in academic publishing: length of peer review. Using detailed administrative data from an economics field journal, we find that, conditional on manuscript quality, referees spend longer reviewing female-authored papers, are slower to recommend accepting them, manuscripts by women go through more rounds of review and their authors spend longer revising them. Less disaggregated data from 32 economics and finance journals corroborate these results. We conclude by showing that all gender gaps decline—and eventually disappear—as the same referee reviews more papers. This pattern suggests novice referees initially statistically discriminate against female authors, but are less likely to do so as their information about and confidence in the peer review process improves. More generally, they also suggest that women may be particularly disadvantaged when evaluators are less familiar with the objectives and parameters of an assessment framework.

Suggested Citation

  • Diane Alexander & Olga Gorelkina & Erin Hengel & Richard Tol, 2023. "Gender and the time cost of peer review," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 23-044/V, Tinbergen Institute.
    • Handle: RePEc:tin:wpaper:20230044
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://papers.tinbergen.nl/23044.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. David Card & Stefano DellaVigna & Patricia Funk & Nagore Iriberri, 2020. "Are Referees and Editors in Economics Gender Neutral?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 135(1), pages 269-327.
    2. Dion, Michelle L. & Sumner, Jane Lawrence & Mitchell, Sara McLaughlin, 2018. "Gendered Citation Patterns across Political Science and Social Science Methodology Fields," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 26(3), pages 312-327, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Bruns, Stephan B. & Doucouliagos, Anthony & Doucouliagos, Hristos & König, Johannes & Stanley, T.D. & Zigova, Katarina, 2026. "The delayed acceptance of female research in economics," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 182(C).
    2. Judit Vall Castelló & Lídia Farré, 2025. "Promoting Female Talent in Science: Evidence from an Affirmative Action Policy," Working Papers 1478, Barcelona School of Economics.
    3. Datta, Deepa D. & Tzur-Ilan, Nitzan, 2025. "Gender Gaps in the Federal Reserve System," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 235(C).
    4. Koyama, Yuna & Fujiwara, Takeo, 2023. "Competitiveness, country economic inequality and adolescent well-being: Analysis of 60 countries," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 325(C).

    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. Erin Hengel & Eunyoung Moon, 2020. "Gender and quality at top economics journals," Working Papers 202001, University of Liverpool, Department of Economics.
    2. Zhou, Sifan & Chai, Sen & Freeman, Richard B., 2024. "Gender homophily: In-group citation preferences and the gender disadvantage," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 53(1).
    3. Koffi, Marlene, 2021. "Innovative ideas and gender inequality," CLEF Working Paper Series 35, Canadian Labour Economics Forum (CLEF), University of Waterloo.
    4. Daniel Stockemer & Gabriela Galassi & Engi Abou-El-Kheir, 2025. "A Fresh Look at the Publication and Citation Gap Between Men and Women: Insights from Economics and Political Science," Staff Working Papers 25-13, Bank of Canada.
    5. Kofi A. A-O. Agyei-Henaku & Charlotte Badu-Prah & Francis Srofenyoh & Ferguson K. Gidiglo & Akua Agyeiwaa-Afrane & Justice G. Djokoto, 2024. "Citations of Publications on Foreign Direct Investments into Agribusiness: Nature, Variability and Drivers," SAGE Open, , vol. 14(1), pages 21582440241, February.
    6. Sebastian Hager & Carlo Schwarz & Fabian Waldinger, 2024. "Measuring Science: Performance Metrics and the Allocation of Talent," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 114(12), pages 4052-4090, December.
    7. Donna K. Ginther & Rina Na, 2021. "Does Mentoring Increase the Collaboration Networks of Female Economists? An Evaluation of the CeMENT Randomized Trial," AEA Papers and Proceedings, American Economic Association, vol. 111, pages 80-85, May.
    8. Syed Hasan & Robert Breunig, 2021. "Article length and citation outcomes," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(9), pages 7583-7608, September.
    9. Paredes, Valentina & Pino, Francisco J. & Díaz, David, 2024. "Does facial structure explain differences in student evaluations of teaching? The role of fWHR as a proxy for perceived dominance," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 54(C).
    10. Jonas Radbruch & Amelie Schiprowski, 2023. "Committee Deliberation and Gender Differences in Influence," CRC TR 224 Discussion Paper Series crctr224_2023_430, University of Bonn and University of Mannheim, Germany.
    11. Davies, Benjamin, 2022. "Gender sorting among economists: Evidence from the NBER," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 217(C).
    12. Verónica Amarante & Marisa Bucheli & Mar�a In�s Moraes & Tatiana P�rez, 2021. "Women in Research in Economics in Uruguay," Revista Cuadernos de Economia, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, FCE, CID, vol. 40(84), pages 763-790.
    13. Bruns, Stephan B. & Doucouliagos, Anthony & Doucouliagos, Hristos & König, Johannes & Stanley, T.D. & Zigova, Katarina, 2026. "The delayed acceptance of female research in economics," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 182(C).
    14. Arceo-Gomez, Eva O. & Campos-Vazquez, Raymundo M., 2022. "Gender Bias in Evaluation Processes," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 89(C).
    15. Zoë Cullen & Ricardo Perez-Truglia, 2023. "The Old Boys' Club: Schmoozing and the Gender Gap," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 113(7), pages 1703-1740, July.
    16. Bělín, Matěj, 2020. "Time-invariant regressors under fixed effects: Simple identification via a proxy variable," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 186(C).
    17. Allison C. Morgan & Nicholas LaBerge & Daniel B. Larremore & Mirta Galesic & Jennie E. Brand & Aaron Clauset, 2022. "Socioeconomic roots of academic faculty," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 6(12), pages 1625-1633, December.
    18. Ann Mari May & Mary G. McGarvey & Yana Rodgers & Mark Killingsworth, 2021. "Critiques, Ethics, Prestige and Status: A Survey of Editors in Economics," Eastern Economic Journal, Palgrave Macmillan;Eastern Economic Association, vol. 47(2), pages 295-318, April.
    19. Tahmooresnejad, Leila & Turkina, Ekaterina, 2022. "Female inventors over time: Factors affecting female Inventors’ innovation performance," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 16(1).
    20. Kai Barron & Ruth Ditlmann & Stefan Gehrig & Sebastian Schweighofer-Kodritsch, 2025. "Explicit and Implicit Belief-Based Gender Discrimination: A Hiring Experiment," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 71(2), pages 1600-1622, February.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • A11 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics - - - Role of Economics; Role of Economists
    • D8 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • J7 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Discrimination

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:tin:wpaper:20230044. 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: Tinbergen Office +31 (0)10-4088900 (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/tinbenl.html .

    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.