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

Abstract

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.

What Is in a “Lake” Name? That Which We Call a Lake by Any Other Name

“…When we assessed peer review requests for manuscripts submitted to Limnology and Oceanography: Letters between 2016 and 2019, we found that the median number per submitted manuscript was 5, with a maximum of 19 separate requests to review. Indeed, the frequency of reviewers denying peer review requests appears to be increasing at ecology journals (Fox et al 2017), although the reasons for this remain unclear. Clearly, locating reviewers who are willing to perform the task is a substantial editorial challenge.…”

Demography, education, and research trends in the interdisciplinary field of disease ecology

“…1). This echoes similar trends in conservation (Jones & Solomon 2019), engineering (National Science Foundation 2020), and ecology as a whole (Fox et al 2018(Fox et al , 2019. Diversity in the workplace and educational institutions is fundamentally important but also increases performance, cooperation, problem-solving, and student retention (Milem 2003;Roberge & Van Dick 2010;Drury et al 2011).…”

Illuminating a Black Box of the Peer Review System: Demographics, Experiences, and Career Benefits of Associate Editors

“…Helmer et al () reported a maximum of 35% female editorial composition in the Frontiers journal group (across all disciplines), while another study reported that for 10 different environmental biology and natural resource management journals only ~15% of editors were women (Cho et al ). Among a subset of ecology journals, the proportion of female AEs has risen substantially in recent years, with current representation between 21% and 35%, depending upon the journal (Fox et al ). Because there is some evidence that women may be less likely to accept an invitation to become an AE (Fox et al ), the representation of female editors in our survey is even more striking.…”

“…Among a subset of ecology journals, the proportion of female AEs has risen substantially in recent years, with current representation between 21% and 35%, depending upon the journal (Fox et al ). Because there is some evidence that women may be less likely to accept an invitation to become an AE (Fox et al ), the representation of female editors in our survey is even more striking.…”

“…Moreover, this network‐based approach is likely to be influenced by implicit and explicit biases against researchers of particular genders, geographic locations, career positions, and ethnicities (among other things). Although the potential for gender and geographic biases in the peer review system are well‐established (Helmer et al ; Murray et al ; Fox and Paine ), relatively fewer studies have investigated disparities on editorial board composition (but see Murray et al , Fox et al ). Even less is known about the professional trajectories of AEs, particularly their publishing experiences before becoming editors (but see Metz et al ).…”