Research: Gender bias in scholarly peer review

Short Description

Peer review is the cornerstone of scholarly publishing and it is essential that peer reviewers are appointed on the basis of their expertise alone. However, it is difficult to check for any bias in the peer-review process because the identity of peer reviewers generally remains confidential.

Here, using public information about the identities of 9.000 editors and 43.000 reviewers from the Frontiers series of journals, it is shown that women are underrepresented in the peer-review process, that editors of both genders operate with substantial same-gender preference (homophily), and that the mechanisms of this homophily are gender-dependent. It is also shown that homophily will persist even if numerical parity between genders is reached, highlighting the need for increased efforts to combat subtler forms of gender bias in scholarly publishing.

Authors

Carole J. Lee, Cassidy R. Sugimoto, Guo Zhang, Blaise Cronin

Access

Gold

Reference

Lee, C. J., Sugimoto, C. R., Zhang, G. and Cronin, B. (2013), Bias in peer review. J Am Soc Inf Sci Tec, 64: 2–17. 

DOI

10.1002/asi.22784

Link

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/asi.22784/full

 

 

Tags: peer review scholarly communication bias gender gender equality paper

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