Pinho-Gomes, AC;
Vassallo, A;
Woodward, M;
Peters, S;
(2022)
Cross-sectional study of the relationship between women's representation among editors and peer reviewers in journals of the British Medical Journal Publishing Group.
BMJ Open
, 12
(5)
, Article e061054. 10.1136/bmjopen-2022-061054.
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Abstract
OBJECTIVES: To investigate whether there is an association between women's representation as peer reviewers and editors of medical journals. METHODS: In this cross-sectional study, the gender of editors and peer reviewers of journals of the British Medical Journal Publishing Group (BMJ-PG) in 2020 was determined based on given names. Trends over time were analysed for the BMJ between 2009 and 2017. RESULTS: Overall, this study included 47 of the 74 journals in the BMJ-PG. Women accounted for 30.2% of the 42 539 peer reviewers, with marked variation from 8% to 50%. Women represented 33.4% of the 555 editors, including 19.2% of the 52 editors-in-chief. There was a moderate positive correlation between the percentage of women as editors and as reviewers (Spearman correlation coefficient 0.590; p<0.0001). The percentage of women as editors, excluding editors-in-chief, was higher when the editor-in-chief was a woman than a man (53.3% vs 29.2%, respectively; p<0.0001). Likewise, the percentage of women as peer reviewers was higher in journals that had a woman as editor-in-chief in comparison with a man (32.0% vs 26.4%, respectively; p<0.0001). There was a slight increase in the percentage of women as peer reviewers from 27.3% in 2009 to 29.7% in 2017 in the BMJ. CONCLUSIONS: Women account for less than one in three peer reviewers of medical journals. Women's representation as peer reviewers is higher in journals with higher percentage of women as editors or with a woman as editor-in-chief. It is, thus, imperative to address the persisting gender gap at all levels of the publishing system.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Cross-sectional study of the relationship between women's representation among editors and peer reviewers in journals of the British Medical Journal Publishing Group |
| Location: | England |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1136/bmjopen-2022-061054 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2022-061054 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/. We |
| Keywords: | General medicine (see internal medicine), medical education & training, medical ethics, Cross-Sectional Studies, Female, Humans, Male, Periodicals as Topic, Publishing |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > Institute of Health Informatics UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > Institute of Health Informatics > Infectious Disease Informatics |
| URI: | https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10176851 |
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