The influence of first author sex on acceptance rates of submissions to Anaesthesia Cases

Abstract

We thank Dr Efthymiou for his letter [1] regarding our recent article [2] and for increasing the dialogue on what we consider an interesting, yet controversial, topic. We agree wholeheartedly with Dr Efthymiou, that submissions should be accepted on scientific merit alone and not be biased by an author's sex, gender, race, ethnicity, institution or any

The impact of peer review on the contribution potential of scientific papers

“…Our paper contributes to the current literature by deconstructing and scrutinizing the peer-review process itself. We studied the role of external factors such as gender in the context of the peer-review process ( Grogan, 2019 ; Murray et al, 2019 ; Laycock & Bailey, 2019 ). While there is a controversy over whether gender biases exist and affect the peer review system and its results, our study found that authors’ gender-related factors do not significantly predict the acceptance timeline or the reviews’ feedback sentiment in this particular dataset.…”

“…Apart from the quality of a paper, there exist numerous variables about a paper, its author(s), and its reviewer(s) that can influence the substance of the peer review a paper receives. Previous meta-science works present similar or conflicting findings on the reviewer responses to the authors' gender (Grogan, 2019;Murray et al, 2019;Laycock & Bailey, 2019), racial diversity and seniority on publication outcomes such as acceptance rates or paper citations. While the scientific community generally perceives gender and racial diversity as a benefit to scientific advancement (Nielsen et al, 2017), there may be evidence indicating that female researchers are under-represented (Hechtman et al, 2018).…”

“…Meanwhile, manuscripts with male last authors are 7% more likely than those with female last authors to be accepted; this gender effect increases acceptance likelihood even more when all authors are male, compared to the acceptance rates of a mixed-gendered team ( Murray et al, 2019 ). However, some researchers showed that papers in which the first author is female are actually accepted more than papers in which the first author is male ( Laycock & Bailey, 2019 ). In an open journal setting where author information is publicly available, studying peer reviewers’ responses to a paper in accordance to the author gender may be pertinent to assessing the equity of the review process.…”

The influence of first author sex on acceptance rates of submissions to Anaesthesia Cases: a reply

“…We thank Dr Efthymiou for his letter regarding our recent article and for increasing the dialogue on what we consider an interesting, yet controversial, topic. We agree wholeheartedly with Dr Efthymiou, that submissions should be accepted on scientific merit alone and not be biased by an author's sex, gender, race, ethnicity, institution or any other factors for that matter .…”

The influence of first author sex on acceptance rates of submissions to Anaesthesia Cases

“…I congratulate Drs Laycock and Bailey on their recent publication and observation that ‘ female first authors were more likely to be accepted than male first authors ’ for case reports published in Anaesthesia Cases . Data from the Universities and College Admissions Service demonstrate that, in the UK, 59% of those accepted to medical school in 2017 were women, possibly reflecting the fact that traditionally women achieve better A‐level grades than men.…”