Gender differences in peer review outcomes and manuscript impact at six journals of ecology and evolution

The productivity and performance of men is generally rated more highly than that of women in controlled experiments, suggesting conscious or unconscious gender biases in assessment. The degree to which editors and reviewers of scholarly journals exhibit gender biases that influence outcomes of the peer review process remains uncertain due to substantial variation among studies. We test whether gender predicts the outcomes of editorial and peer review for >23,000 research manuscripts submitted to six journals in ecology and evolution from 2010 to 2015. Papers with female and male first authors were equally likely to be sent for peer review. However, papers with female first authors obtained, on average, slightly worse peer review scores and were more likely to be rejected after peer review, though the difference varied among journals. These gender differences appear to be partly due to differences in authorial roles. Papers for the which the first author deferred corresponding authorship to a coauthor (which women do more often than men) obtained significantly worse peer review scores and were less likely to get positive editorial decisions. Gender differences in corresponding authorship explained some of gender differences in peer review scores and positive editorial decisions. In contrast to these observations on submitted manuscripts, gender differences in peer review outcomes were observed in a survey of >12,000 published manuscripts; women reported similar rates of rejection (from a prior journal) before eventual publication. After publication, papers with female authors were cited less often than those with male authors, though the differences are very small (~2%). Our data do not allow us to test hypotheses about mechanisms underlying the gender discrepancies we observed, but strongly support the conclusion that papers authored by women have lower acceptance rates and are less well cited than are papers authored by men in ecology.

在对照实验（controlled experiments）中，男性的科研生产力与学术表现通常被评定为高于女性，这暗示了评估环节中存在有意识或无意识的性别偏见。学术期刊的编辑与审稿人在同行评审（peer review）过程中所展现出的、会影响评审结果的性别偏见程度，因各项研究间存在显著差异而尚未明确。我们针对2010年至2015年间提交给6种生态与进化领域期刊的逾2.3万篇研究手稿，检验了性别是否会对编辑与同行评审结果产生预测作用。第一作者为男性与女性的手稿，其获得同行评审邀请的概率并无显著差异。然而，第一作者为女性的手稿，平均同行评审得分略低，且在同行评审后更易被拒稿——不过这一差异因期刊不同而有所变化。此类性别差异部分源于作者角色的不同。当第一作者将通讯作者身份让与合著者时（女性相较于男性更常做出此类选择），手稿的同行评审得分会显著更低，且获得正面编辑决策的概率也更低。通讯作者身份方面的性别差异，可以部分解释同行评审得分与正面编辑决策中存在的性别差异。与上述针对投稿手稿的观察结果不同，在一项涵盖逾1.2万篇已发表手稿的调查中，我们观察到了同行评审结果的性别差异；女性作者在最终发表前，曾被此前投稿的期刊拒稿的比例与男性作者相仿。在发表之后，女性作者的论文被引频次低于男性作者的论文，不过二者差异极小，仅约2%。我们的数据无法用于检验我们所观察到的性别差异背后的机制假说，但有力支持了如下结论：在生态学领域，女性作者的论文相较于男性作者的论文，其录用率更低、被引频次也更少。