Gender Representation on Journal Editorial Boards in the Mathematical Sciences

Topaz, Chad M.; Sen, Shilad

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0161357

Cited by 92 publications

(114 citation statements)

References 26 publications

(33 reference statements)

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“…In the geosciences, for example, although there are significant numbers of women earning geoscience degrees in the US ) these numbers are not translating into equivalent female representation in academic faculty (Glass 2015) or professional activities such as journal refereeing (Lerback and Hanson 2017). Similarly, lower than expected representation of women has been observed in editorial boards in mathematics (Topaz and Sen 2016) and as invited conference speakers in ecology and conservation (Schroeder et al 2013;Sardelis and Drew 2016). Women of colour are even more under-represented across STEM degrees and positions, with representation declining with increasing seniority (Ong et al 2011;Ballenger et al 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Diversity in geoscience: Participation, behaviour, and the division of scientific labour at a Canadian geoscience conference

King

MacKenzie

Tadaki

et al. 2018

FACETS

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Effective policies promoting diversity in geoscience require understanding of how the values and practices of the community support the inclusion of different social groups. As sites of knowledge exchange and professional development, academic conferences are important culturing institutions that can alleviate or reproduce barriers to diversity in geoscience. This study examines diversity at a 2017 geoscience conference, the joint Canadian Geophysical Union and Canadian Society of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology annual meeting, through observation of participation, presentation content, and behaviour in conference sessions. Across 256 observed presentations, women constituted 28% of speakers, whereas women of colour made up only 5%. Participation rates differed between disciplinary sections, with the most populous sessions (Hydrology and Earth Surface) having the lowest percentage of women. Examination of presentation content reveals that the methods and scholarly contributions of both women and people of colour differed from the majority, suggesting an intellectual division of labour in geoscience. Examination of audience behaviours between presenters reveals how a "chilly climate" can be experienced by women and other marginalized demographics in conferences. We argue that there is more to be done than simply increasing numbers of women or other minorities in geoscientific spaces, and we suggest pathways to making geoscience a more inclusive and democratic pursuit.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Diversity in geoscience: Participation, behaviour, and the division of scientific labour at a Canadian geoscience conference

King

MacKenzie

Tadaki

et al. 2018

FACETS

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“…Women remain underrepresented among reviewers of journal papers (Fox, Burns, & Meyer, 2016a;Helmer, Schottdorf, Neef, & Battaglia, 2017;Lerback & Hanson, 2017). Women also remain underrepresented among the gatekeepers of scientific publishing; while representation varies substantially among disciplines and among journals within disciplines (Amrein, Langmann, Fahrleitner-Pammer, Pieber, & Zollner-Schwetz, 2011;Morton & Sonnad, 2007;Topaz & Sen, 2016), when compared to the gender of authors in a journal, women are underrepresented on editorial boards (Fox, Burns, & Meyer, 2016a;Helmer et al, 2017;Manlove & Belou, 2018;Topaz & Sen, 2016;Wehi, Beggs, & Anderson, 2019), especially at more senior editorial levels, for example, editors in chief (Amrein et al, 2011;Cho et al, 2014). While it is clear that women are underrepresented as reviewers and editors, we still lack a clear understanding of the causes and consequences of this gender disparity.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gender diversity of editorial boards and gender differences in the peer review process at six journals of ecology and evolution

Fox

Duffy

Fairbairn

et al. 2019

Ecology and Evolution

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Despite substantial progress for women in science, women remain underrepresented in many aspects of the scholarly publication process. We examined how the gender diversity of editors and reviewers changed over time for six journals in ecology and evolution (2003–2015 for four journals, 2007–2015 or 2009–2015 for the other two), and how several aspects of the peer review process differed between female and male editors and reviewers. We found that for five of the six journals, women were either absent or very poorly represented as handling editors at the beginning of our dataset. The representation of women increased gradually and consistently, with women making up 29% of the handling editors (averaged across journals) in 2015, similar to the representation of women as last authors on ecology papers (23% in 2015) but lower than the proportion of women among all authors (31%) and among members of the societies that own the journals (37%–40%). The proportion of women among reviewers has also gradually but consistently increased over time, reaching 27% by 2015. Female editors invited more female reviewers than did male editors, and this difference increased with age of the editor. Men and women who were invited to review did not differ in whether they responded to the review invitation, but, of those that responded, women were slightly more likely to agree to review. In contrast, women were less likely than men to accept invitations to serve on journal editorial boards. Our analyses indicate that there has been progress in the representation of women as reviewers and editors in ecology and evolutionary biology, but women are still underrepresented among the gatekeepers of scholarly publishing relative to their representation among researchers.

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“…The opportunity for homophilous interactions is determined by the demographics of the 572 gatekeeper pool, and the demographics of the gatekeepers differed significantly from those of 573 the authors, even for last authors, who tend to be more senior [59][60][61][62]. The underrepresentation 574 of women at eLife mirrors global trends-women comprise a minority of total authorships, yet 575 constitute an even smaller proportion of gatekeepers across many domains [14, [67][68][69][70][71][72][73][74]. Similarly, 576 gatekeepers at eLife were less geographically diverse than their authorship, reflecting the general 577 underrepresentation of the "global south" in leadership positions of international journals [75].…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Increasing representation of women and scientists from a more diverse set of nations among 588 eLife's editor may lead to more diverse pool of peer reviewers and reviewing editors and a more 589 equitable peer review process. Editors often invite peer reviewers from their own professional 590 networks, networks that likely reflect the characteristics of the editor [76][77][78]; this can lead to 591 editors, who tend to be men [14, [67][68][69][70][71][72][73][74] and from scientifically advanced countries [75] to invite 592 peer reviewers who are demographically similar to themselves [44,79,80], inadvertently 593 excluding certain groups from the gatekeeping process. Accordingly, we found that male 594…”

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confidence: 99%

Author-Reviewer Homophily in Peer Review

Murray

Siler

Larivière

et al. 2018

Preprint

131

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The fairness of scholarly peer review has been challenged by evidence of disparities in publication outcomes based on author demographic characteristics. To assess this, we conducted an exploratory analysis of peer review outcomes of 23,876 initial submissions and 7,192 full submissions that were submitted to the biosciences journal eLife between 2012 and 2017. Women and authors from nations outside of North America and Europe were underrepresented both as gatekeepers (editors and peer reviewers) and authors. We found evidence of a homophilic relationship between the demographics of the gatekeepers and authors and the outcome of peer review; that is, there were higher rates of acceptance in the case of gender and country homophily. The acceptance rate for manuscripts with male last authors was seven percent, or 3.5 percentage points, greater than for female last authors (95% CI = [0.5, 6.4]); this gender inequity was greatest, at nine percent or about 4.8 percentage points (95% CI = [0.3, 9.1]), when the team of reviewers was all male; this difference was smaller and not significantly different for mixed-gender reviewer teams. Homogeny between countries of the gatekeeper and the corresponding author was also associated with higher acceptance rates for many countries. To test for the persistence of these effects after controlling for potentially confounding variables, we conducted a logistic regression including document and author metadata. Disparities in acceptance rates associated with gender and country of affiliation and the homophilic associations remained. We conclude with a discussion of mechanisms that could contribute to this effect, directions for future research, and policy implications. Code and anonymized data have been made available at https://github.com/murrayds/elife-analysis 1/61 Submitted to PLOS Biology Author summaryPeer review, the primary method by which scientific work is evaluated, is ideally a fair and equitable process in which scientific work is judged solely on its own merit. However, the integrity of peer review has been called into question based on evidence that outcomes often differ between male and female authors, and for authors in different countries. We investigated such disparities at the biosciences journal eLife by analyzing the demographics of authors and gatekeepers (editors and peer reviewers), and peer review outcomes of all submissions between 2012 and 2017. Outcomes were more favorable for male authors and those affiliated with institutions in North America and Europe; these groups were also over-represented among gatekeepers. There was evidence that peer review outcomes were influenced by homophily-a preference of gatekeepers for manuscripts from authors with shared characteristics. We discuss mechanisms that could contribute to this effect, directions for future research, and policy implications. 2/61Submitted to PLOS Biology 1 Peer review is foundational to the development, gatekeeping, and dissemination of research, 2 while also underpinning the professional hiera...

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Gender Representation on Journal Editorial Boards in the Mathematical Sciences

Cited by 92 publications

References 26 publications

Diversity in geoscience: Participation, behaviour, and the division of scientific labour at a Canadian geoscience conference

Diversity in geoscience: Participation, behaviour, and the division of scientific labour at a Canadian geoscience conference

Gender diversity of editorial boards and gender differences in the peer review process at six journals of ecology and evolution

Author-Reviewer Homophily in Peer Review

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