Original Articles
Influence of Author's Gender on the Peer-Review Process in Vision Science

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajo.2022.02.017Get rights and content

Highlights

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    First and last female authorships are unevenly distributed by country, journal, and topic.

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    Review and acceptance times are significantly higher for female-authored manuscripts.

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    Delays >1 month to get published were found in some research topics.

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    It has a multifactorial origin: gender bias, women fear to be held to higher standards, etc.

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    Awareness may assist in the implementation of preventive and corrective measures.

PURPOSE

To investigate the gender gap in first/last authors in vision science and whether gender affects manuscript review times.

DESIGN

Observational retrospective database study.

METHODS

First/last author's gender and country were assigned to 30 438 PubMed records (data derived from Q1-Q2 Ophthalmology journals for 2016–2020). Using mixed models, the influence of First Author Female (FAF) and Last Author Female (LAF) were evaluated on the manuscripts’ review timeline. This analysis was performed globally and in predefined subgroups (English names, Asian names, specific topics). Additionally, the gender GAP was explored by country, journal, and research topics.

RESULTS

The percentages of FAF/LAF were unevenly distributed by country; in the top 30 ophthalmology journals, FAF accounted for 40.0%±6.7% of the publications whereas LAF accounted for 27.1%±4.9%. Overall, FAF/LAF papers underwent significantly longer times to be reviewed (up to +10 days) and accepted (+5 days). These differences persisted when only English names—easily recognizable worldwide—were considered, but not for Asian names. Delays >1 month to get published were found for FAF in 3 of 4 topics analyzed (eg, amblyopia).

CONCLUSIONS

Significant differences were found in both review and acceptance times for FAF or LAF papers. The causes for this are likely multifactorial and could be explained by a combination of gender bias and by women's concerns with being held to higher standards, something that has been previously documented, thereby perhaps delaying the rebuttal to reviewers. Increased awareness of this source of potential bias may assist in the implementation of preventive and corrective measures.

Section snippets

METHODS

This was an observational retrospective study. The PubMed records of the first and second Ophthalmology JCR quartiles—Q1 and Q2—were exported for analysis in February-March 2021. Only publications indexed in PubMed from 2016 to 2020 were included for analysis (n = 35 644).

RESULTS

Initially, 35 644 PubMed records were exported, of which 30 438 remained after applying the exclusion criteria. Because names may be more commonly assigned to a gender depending on the country, the 19 046 unique combinations of name/affiliation country were checked. The API classified 11 760 combinations with an accuracy ≥95%, each based on ≥10 samples. Of these, 4653 were females. The results for the 265 authors previously identified and manually searched confirmed the expected 95% confidence.

DISCUSSION

For years, sociologists have struggled to identify the reasons behind women's underrepresentation in Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, and Medicine (STEMM),21 for which gender biases and a lack of female role models have often been held responsible.

Our results demonstrate that vision science is not immune to gender disparities, which vary considerably between countries (Figure 2). Although some countries like Sweden, Belgium, Norway, and New Zealand have achieved parity in both FAF

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    • Supplemental Material available at AJO.com.

    Meeting Presentation: Presented at the Women in Vision and Eye Research Ireland conference, September 10, 2021.

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