Women scientists may publish more, if given a fair chance

William Atkins
Saturday, 26 January 2008 21:35

Science - Biology

Women are more likely to have their research published in a journal if peers who review their work do not know they are women, according to a study headed by a Canadian female scientist.      

Amber E. Budden, of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Toronto (Canada), and her colleagues looked into papers accepted by Behavioral Ecology before and after 2001, the year in which the organization changed its reviewing practices.

[Also, see University of California, Santa Barbara, information on Budden at: http://www.avianecology.org/.]

The journal switched to a double-blind peer review in 2001 from a single-blind peer review.

In a single-blind review the author does not know who is reviewing his/her paper, but the reviewer knows the author’s identity, gender, and other characteristics. In a double-blind review neither the reviewer nor the author knows the identity of the other.

The journal switched to the double-blind review because it knew that biases (such as with gender, nationality, religion, nepotism (knowing or recognizing the person), whether the person is actively in the field of study or not, etc.) could possibly result from the single-blind review.

They wanted to eliminate such biases.

In both types of reviews, the ultimate goal is to publish the best quality papers regardless of who is writing the paper.

However, this goal may not be achieved if reviewers have prejudices and biases while reviewing papers.

Budden’s team, thus, investigated the degree by which factors (other than quality of the paper) influence publications of scientific research. They wanted to find out the amount of impact that biases in publications have on the scientific community, especially gender.

What did they find?