Peer review for the Canadian Journal of Anesthesia in 2016 and 2017: a retrospective analysis by reviewer and author gender.
01 Mar 2020-Canadian Journal of Anaesthesia-journal Canadien D Anesthesie (Springer International Publishing)-Vol. 67, Iss: 3, pp 336-342
TL;DR: The results are consistent with previous reports of underrepresentation of women as reviewers in various disciplines and formal policies that promote increased gender diversity should be considered.
Abstract: Our objectives were to analyze the gender of reviewers of all manuscripts submitted to the Canadian Journal of Anesthesia in 2016 and 2017. We hypothesized that the percentage of reviewers who were women would be ≤ 25%, an estimate based on the expert opinion estimates of the investigators and much less than the overall proportion of women in medicine. Reviewers and authors of manuscripts submitted between 1 January 2016 and 31 December 2017 were coded as “woman”, “man”, or “unknown gender” according to an internet search of the person’s name, address, medical registration, and/or first name. We also explored associations between reviewer gender and author gender, numbers and types of manuscripts assigned, as well as speed of acceptance and completion of reviews. Of the 1,300 manuscripts for which first and corresponding author gender were identified, 855 manuscripts (66%) were only assessed internally by the editor-in-chief and/or associate editors, and 445 manuscripts (34%) were sent for external peer review. Of the 280 reviewers for these manuscripts, 64 (22.9%; 95% confidence interval [CI], 18.3 to 28.1) were women (P = 0.40 compared with 25%). Women provided 174 (18%) and men provided 780 (82%) of the 954 external written reviews. Four hundred and seventy of the 1,300 manuscripts (36.2%; 95% CI, 33.6 to 38.8) had a woman as the first and/or corresponding author. Despite 36.2% of the authors being women, only 22.9% of reviewers were women and they represented only 18% of the individual written reviews gathered. Our results are consistent with previous reports of underrepresentation of women as reviewers in various disciplines. Formal policies that promote increased gender diversity should be considered.
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TL;DR: In this paper, the authors identify barriers to women's participation in research, including a disproportionate amount of family responsibilities, a disproportionate burden of clinical service, gender bias, sexual harassment and the gender pay gap.
Abstract: Despite increasing numbers of women entering anaesthesia, they remain persistently under-represented within academic anaesthesia and research. Gender discordance is seen across multiple aspects of research, including authorship, editorship, peer review, grant receipt, speaking and leading. Women are also under-represented at higher faculty ranks and in department chair positions. These inequities are further magnified for women with intersectional identities, such as those who identify as Black, indigenous and women of colour. Several barriers to participation in research have been identified to date, including a disproportionate amount of family responsibilities, a disproportionate burden of clinical service, gender bias, sexual harassment and the gender pay gap. Several strategies to improve gender equity have been proposed. Increasing access to formal mentorship of women in academic medicine is frequently cited and has been used by healthcare institutions and medical societies. Senior faculty and leaders must also be conscious of including women in sponsorship and networking opportunities. Institutions should provide support for parents of all genders, including supportive parental leave policies and flexible work models. Women should also be materially supported to attend formal educational conferences targeted for women, aimed at improving networking, peer support and professional development. Finally, leaders must display a clear intolerance for sexual harassment and discrimination to drive culture change. Peers and leaders alike, of all genders, can act as upstanders and speak up on behalf of targets of discrimination, both in the moment or after the fact. Gender inequities have persisted for far too long and can no longer be ignored. Diversifying the anaesthesia research community is essential to the future of the field.
13 citations
TL;DR: The Council of Faculty and Academic Societies (CFAS) comprises representatives from medical schools and professional societies who guide the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAWC) as mentioned in this paper, a body composed of faculty and academic societies.
Abstract: Background: The Council of Faculty and Academic Societies (CFAS) comprises representatives from medical schools and professional societies who guide the Association of American Medical Colleges (AA...
7 citations
TL;DR: This edition of the Journal marks the beginning of a new year and the conclusion of 2020 as the most challenging year, collectively and individually, in recent memory—a consequence of the greatest global public health crisis in a century.
Abstract: This edition of the Journal marks the beginning of a new year and the conclusion of 2020 as the most challenging year, collectively and individually, in recent memory—a consequence of the greatest global public health crisis in a century. This edition also marks the changing of the Journal’s guard. I feel both immensely honoured and humbled to have been passed the baton and given the opportunity to serve the Journal and our shared community-at-large as the new Editor-in-Chief. I most enthusiastically take on this challenging task together with an editorial board comprising some of the most amazing group of individuals imaginable. There are immense shoes to fill, and in this context, I would like to express my sincerest gratitude to my predecessor, Dr. Hilary Grocott—not only on behalf of all of us for his outstanding service and accomplishments, tireless work, and inspiring leadership during his tenure of seven years, but also personally for his extraordinary generosity and dedication in transitioning me into this important position. Receiving the baton is one thing, but being handed it from a fellow athlete whose run has just broken several records is another. The Journal’s impact factor, 3.779 (2019), is at an all-time high. Article downloads have been surging, including almost half a million just related to the Journal’s recent series of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) articles. As I write this, the number of submissions in 2020 has again surpassed that of the previous year—and by a considerable margin. Particularly in these trying times, such positive news is uplifting and inspiring for all of us. While a difficult act to follow, it is said that the runner receiving the baton must not look back. My principal task after handover, of course, is to firmly keep the Journal on a steady forward course along this positive trajectory. Rather than quickly initiating revolutionary changes and ‘‘reinventing the wheel’’, my vision is one of evolutionary leadership and initiation of incremental advances and new accents, capitalizing on the unified strength of a diverse and inclusive team (more on that below). At the same time, my focus will be on a number of priority issues that I believe will benefit from dedicated attention. When I started my research career in anesthesiology a quarter century ago, clinical studies tended to be small and underpowered, focused on surrogate outcomes, and routinely lacked a longer-term perspective. This was perhaps in part a reflection of a sense that our job was done after extubating our patients and delivering them to the recovery room. Today, we are in the midst of a monumental culture change in our specialty where we recognize that what happens in the perioperative period is not akin to footprints in the sand that get washed away with the next wave. In contrast, we now direct considerable efforts towards improving important long-term patient outcomes following anesthesia care and surgery, ranging from the domains of neurocognitive function, cardiovascular health, and prevention of chronic pain and persistent opioid use to freedom from cancer recurrence. In the last few years, I have not heard anybody lament the once often-made statement that ‘‘anesthesiology is a specialty without a disease.’’ Dedicated perioperative care S. K. W. Schwarz, MD, PhD, FRCPC (&) Department of Anesthesiology, Pharmacology & Therapeutics, The University of British Columbia, 2176 Health Sciences Mall, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z3, Canada e-mail: stephan.schwarz@ubc.ca
6 citations
14 Sep 2021
TL;DR: In this paper, gender disparities in medical education are increasingly demonstrated, including in trainee assessment, and a study aimed to evaluate whether gender differences exist in trainees' assessment in train...
Abstract: Background: Gender disparities in medical education are increasingly demonstrated, including in trainee assessment. Objective: This study aimed to evaluate whether gender differences exist in train...
3 citations
TL;DR: In this paper , the authors evaluated whether the coronavirus disease pandemic is associated with changes in manuscript acceptance rates among pulmonary/critical care journals and sex-based disparities in these rates.
Abstract: Rationale: The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has negatively affected women more than men and may influence the publication of non–COVID-19 research. Objectives: To evaluate whether the COVID-19 pandemic is associated with changes in manuscript acceptance rates among pulmonary/critical care journals and sex-based disparities in these rates. Methods: We analyzed first, senior, and corresponding author sex (female vs. male, identified by matching first names in a validated Genderize database) of manuscripts submitted to four pulmonary/critical care journals between January 1, 2018 and December 31, 2020. We constructed interrupted time series regression models to evaluate whether the proportion of female first and senior authors of non–COVID-19 original research manuscripts changed with the pandemic. Next, we performed multivariable logistic regressions to evaluate the association of author sex with acceptance of original research manuscripts. Results: Among 8,332 original research submissions, women represented 39.9% and 28.3% of first and senior authors, respectively. We found no change in the proportion of female first or senior authors of non–COVID-19 or COVID-19 submitted research manuscripts during the COVID-19 era. Non–COVID-19 manuscripts submitted during the COVID-19 era had reduced odds of acceptance, regardless of author sex (first author adjusted OR [aOR], 0.46 [95% confidence interval (CI), 0.36–0.59]; senior author aOR, 0.46 [95% CI, 0.37–0.57]). Female senior authorship was associated with decreased acceptance of non–COVID-19 research manuscripts (crude rates, 14.4% [male] vs. 13.2% [female]; aOR, 0.84 [95% CI, 0.71–0.99]). Conclusions: Although female author submissions were not disproportionately influenced by COVID-19, we found evidence suggesting sex disparities in manuscript acceptance rates. Journals may need to consider strategies to reduce this disparity, and academic institutions may need to factor our findings, including lower acceptance rates for non–COVID-19 manuscripts, into promotion decisions.
2 citations
References
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TL;DR: The representation of women among first authors of original research in high impact general medical journals was significantly higher in 2014 than 20 years ago, but it has plateaued in recent years and has declined in some journals.
Abstract: Objective To examine changes in representation of women among first authors of original research published in high impact general medical journals from 1994 to 2014 and investigate differences between journals. Design Observational study. Study sample All original research articles published in Annals of Internal Medicine , Archives of Internal Medicine, The BMJ, JAMA, The Lancet, and the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) for one issue every alternate month from February 1994 to June 2014. Main exposures Time and journal of publication. Main outcome measures Prevalence of female first authorship and its adjusted association with time of publication and journal, assessed using a multivariable logistic regression model that accounted for number of authors, study type and specialty/topic, continent where the study was conducted, and the interactions between journal and time of publication, study type, and continent. Estimates from this model were used to calculate adjusted odds ratios against the mean across the six journals, with 95% confidence intervals and P values to describe the associations of interest. Results The gender of the first author was determined for 3758 of the 3860 articles considered; 1273 (34%) were women. After adjustment, female first authorship increased significantly from 27% in 1994 to 37% in 2014 (P NEJM seemed to follow a different pattern, with female first authorship decreasing; it also seemed to decline in recent years in The BMJ but started substantially higher (approximately 40%), and The BMJ had the highest total proportion of female first authors. Compared with the mean across all six journals, first authors were significantly less likely to be female in the NEJM (adjusted odds ratio 0.68, 95% confidence interval 0.53 to 0.89) and significantly more likely to be female in The BMJ (1.30, 1.01 to 1.66) over the study period. Conclusions The representation of women among first authors of original research in high impact general medical journals was significantly higher in 2014 than 20 years ago, but it has plateaued in recent years and has declined in some journals. These results, along with the significant differences seen between journals, suggest that underrepresentation of research by women in high impact journals is still an important concern. The underlying causes need to be investigated to help to identify practices and strategies to increase women’s influence on and contributions to the evidence that will determine future healthcare policies and standards of clinical practice.
350 citations
"Peer review for the Canadian Journa..." refers result in this paper
...This is consistent with the numbers of women practicing anesthesiology in Canada(20) and internationally,(21,22) and with the gender of authors of published papers in the Journal,(17) and other anesthesiology(5,6) and general medical journals.(7) The success of women and men authors was similar overall; however, manuscripts submitted by women were less likely to be accepted after internal review....
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TL;DR: Gender gaps in grant funding are attributable to less favourable assessments of women as principal investigators, not of the quality of their proposed research.
317 citations
TL;DR: It is shown that women are underrepresented in the peer-review process, that editors of both genders operate with substantial same-gender preference (homophily), and that the mechanisms of this homophily are gender-dependent.
Abstract: Peer review is the cornerstone of scholarly publishing and it is essential that peer reviewers are appointed on the basis of their expertise alone. However, it is difficult to check for any bias in the peer-review process because the identity of peer reviewers generally remains confidential. Here, using public information about the identities of 9000 editors and 43000 reviewers from the Frontiers series of journals, we show that women are underrepresented in the peer-review process, that editors of both genders operate with substantial same-gender preference (homophily), and that the mechanisms of this homophily are gender-dependent. We also show that homophily will persist even if numerical parity between genders is reached, highlighting the need for increased efforts to combat subtler forms of gender bias in scholarly publishing.
252 citations
TL;DR: Using a large data set that includes the genders and ages of authors and reviewers from 2012 to 2015 for the journals of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), it is shown that women were used less as reviewers than expected.
Abstract: Jory Lerback and Brooks Hanson present an analysis that reveals evidence of gender bias in peer review for scholarly publications.
192 citations
TL;DR: Gender differences exist in editor and reviewer characteristics at JAMA with no apparent effect on the final outcome of the peer review process or acceptance for publication.
Abstract: Objective. —To assess whether manuscripts received byJAMAin 1991 possessed differing peer review and manuscript processing characteristics, or had a variable chance of acceptance, associated with the gender of the participants in the peer review process. Design. —Retrospective cohort study of 1851 research articles. Setting. —JAMAeditorial office. Participants. —Eight male and five femaleJAMAeditors, 2452 male and 930 female reviewers, and 1698 male and 462 female authors. Main Outcome Measure. —Statistically significant gender bias. Results. —Female editors were assigned manuscripts from female corresponding authors more often than were male editors (P .4). Conclusions. —Gender differences exist in editor and reviewer characteristics atJAMAwith no apparent effect on the final outcome of the peer review process or acceptance for publication. (JAMA. 1994;272:139-142)
159 citations