Gender disparities in authorship of invited submissions in high-impact psychology journals.

Abstract

Women comprise the majority of graduates from psychology doctoral programs, but equity is yet to be achieved in the professoriate. Publication drives career advancement, underscoring the need to investigate publication-based metrics of eminence. To our knowledge, authorship of invited submissions-a proxy of research esteem-has not been the focus of any psychology studies. In this cross-sectional study, authorship of invited submission(s) in five elite psychology journals (2015-2019) was investigated: Psychological Science in the Public Interest, Annual Review of Psychology, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, and Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior. We hypothesized that women would be underrepresented. Author gender was classified using publicly available details (e.g., pronouns on professional websites). Primary outcomes were the proportion of women solo-, first-, or likely invited authors, relative to the proportion of women full and associate professors in psychology at R1 institutions (42.3%). Of 1,828 authorship positions (713 articles), 35.6% were occupied by women. Relative to the nominated base rate, women were disproportionately underrepresented. When the likely invited author on a multi-author publication was a woman, the first author was a woman on 51.0% of papers; when the likely invited author was a man, the first author was a woman on 34.1% of papers. These findings align with prior studies and extend the research by demonstrating that the gender publication gap in psychology is exacerbated in invited submissions and driven by particular subfields. Continued efforts are needed to redress

Understated gender disparities due to outcome-dependent selection: Comment on Mackelprang et al. (2022)

“…Outcome-dependent selection can severely compromise the interpretations of subsequent analyses (Lu et al, 2022) and is likely to lead to erroneous conclusions (Sjölander, 2022). Next, we explain why outcome-dependent selection is a problem in the context of the research question posed by Mackelprang et al (2022).…”

“…To answer this critical question, Mackelprang et al (2022) examined invited publications in five high-impact psychology journals. They first calculated the share of women among authors of the invited publications (i.e., their selected sample; 35.6%), then compared it with a "base rate" (42.3%).…”

“…Outcome-dependent selection is when observations are included or selected for a study based on their outcome. Mackelprang et al (2022) sought to evaluate the gender gap in invited publications in elite psychology journals. In this context, publishing in these journals is the outcome of interest.…”

“…The closer R is to zero, the greater the gender disparity. Now, let's turn to the evidence presented in Mackelprang et al (2022). They compared the share of women among their study sample of authors invited to publish with a share of women in a separate sample in place of a reference population.…”

“…

What is the gender gap in invited publications in high-impact psychology journals? To answer this critical question, Mackelprang et al (2022) examined invited publications in five high-impact psychology journals. They first calculated the share of women among authors of the invited publications (35.6%), then compared it with a "base rate" (42.3%; the share of women among associate and full psychology professors at R1 institutions).This comparison was presented as empirical evidence of women being underrepresented in the authorship of publications in these high-impact journals.

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