Gender and geographical bias in the editorial decision-making process of biomedical journals: a case-control study
Objectives To assess whether the gender (primary) and geographical affiliation (post-hoc) of the first and/or last authors are associated with publication decisions after peer review. Design Case-control study. Setting Biomedical journals. Participants Original peer-reviewed manuscripts submitted between 1 January 2012 and 31 December 2019. Main outcome measure Manuscripts accepted (cases) and rejected for publication (controls). Results Of 6213 included manuscripts, 5294 (85.2%) first and 5479 (88.1%) last authors’ gender were identified; 2511 (47.4%) and 1793 (32.7%) were women, respectively. The proportion of women first and last authors was 48.4% (n=1314) and 32.2% (n=885) among cases and 46.4% (n=1197) and 33.2% (n=908) among controls. After adjustment, the association between the first author’s gender and acceptance for publication remained non-significant 1.04 (0.92 to 1.17). Acceptance for publication was lower for first authors affiliated to Asia 0.58 (0.46 to 0.73), Africa 0.
