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...

COMMENTMeasuring the global movements of researchers will help to assess the effects of political actions on science.© 2 0 1 7 M a c m i l l a n P u b l i s h e r s L i m i t e d , p a r t o f S p r i n g e r N a t u r e . A l l r i g h t s r e s e r v e d .

This paper presents a methodological framework for developing scientific mobility indicators based on bibliometric data. We identify nearly 16 million individual authors from publications covered in the Web of Science for the 2008-2015 period. Based on the information provided across individuals' publication records, we propose a general classification for analyzing scientific mobility using institutional affiliation changes. We distinguish between migrants--authors who have ruptures with their country of origin--and travelers--authors who gain additional affiliations while maintaining affiliation with their country of origin. We find that 3.7% of researchers who have published at least one paper over the period are mobile.Paper accepted for publication in Journal of Informetrics 2 Travelers represent 72.7% of all mobile scholars, but migrants have higher scientific impact. We apply this classification at the country level, expanding the classification to incorporate the directionality of scientists' mobility (i.e., incoming and outgoing). We provide a brief analysis to highlight the utility of the proposed taxonomy to study scholarly mobility and discuss the implications for science policy.

This study compares the flows of mobile researchers and the number of publications in international collaboration within the context of scientific and economic capacities. The goal is to identify the convergence or discrepancy of countries in mobility and collaboration and determine the positions and relative influence of countries in both processes. Using affiliation data from scientific publications, we analyze the distributions and networks of collaboration and mobility and their structural differences. The results show that there is a significant relationship between the flow of mobile researchers and the capacity for publishing with foreign partners in the more prolific countries, although mobility is always lower than collaboration. Size matters and scientific relationship are highly resource-dependent. Advanced and Proficient countries accumulate the highest proportion of the mobile authors and international publications with an extremely low representation of mobility in Developing and Lagging countries. In addition, the placement of countries is not always consistent in both networks, revealing distinct roles of mobility and collaboration, with particular instability for lower income countries. The more resources available in a country (both scientific and economic) the greater the likelihood of attracting foreign partners and mobilizing human capital. The policy relevance of these structural differences are described and a brief description of the limitations and future research are provided.

Tenure-track faculty members in the United States are evaluated on their performance in both research and teaching. In spite of accusations of bias and invalidity, student evaluations of teaching have dominated teaching evaluation at U.S. universities. However, studies on the topic have tended to be limited to particular institutional and disciplinary contexts. Moreover, in spite of the idealistic assumption that research and teaching are mutually beneficial, few studies have examined the link between research performance and student evaluations of teaching. In this study, we conduct a large scale exploratory analysis of the factors associated with student evaluations of teachers, controlling for heterogeneous institutional and disciplinary contexts. We source public student evaluations of teaching from RateMyProfessor.com and information regarding career and contemporary research performance indicators from the company Academic Analytics. The factors most associated with higher student ratings were the attractiveness of the faculty and the student's interest in the class; the factors most associated with lower student ratings were course difficulty and whether student comments mentioned an accent or a teaching assistant. Moreover, faculty tended to be rated more highly when they were young, male, White, in the Humanities, and held a rank of full professor. We observed little to no evidence of any relationship, positive or negative, between student evaluations of teaching and research performance. These results shed light on what factors relate to student evaluations of teaching across diverse contexts and contribute to the continuing discussion teaching evaluation and faculty assessment.