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. 2021 Oct 20;16(10):e0257919.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0257919. eCollection 2021.

Gender gap in journal submissions and peer review during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. A study on 2329 Elsevier journals

Flaminio Squazzoni  1 , Giangiacomo Bravo  2   3 , Francisco Grimaldo  4 , Daniel García-Costa  4 , Mike Farjam  5 , Bahar Mehmani  6
Affiliations

Gender gap in journal submissions and peer review during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. A study on 2329 Elsevier journals

Flaminio Squazzoni et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

During the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, there was an unusually high submission rate of scholarly articles. Given that most academics were forced to work from home, the competing demands for familial duties may have penalized the scientific productivity of women. To test this hypothesis, we looked at submitted manuscripts and peer review activities for all Elsevier journals between February and May 2018-2020, including data on over 5 million authors and referees. Results showed that during the first wave of the pandemic, women submitted proportionally fewer manuscripts than men. This deficit was especially pronounced among more junior cohorts of women academics. The rate of the peer-review invitation acceptance showed a less pronounced gender pattern with women taking on a greater service responsibility for journals, except for health & medicine, the field where the impact of COVID-19 research has been more prominent. Our findings suggest that the first wave of the pandemic has created potentially cumulative advantages for men.

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Conflict of interest statement

BM is employee of Elsevier and organised the data sharing process.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1. Total submissions (A) and proportion of accepted reviews (B) per week across the whole period covered by the dataset.
The shaded areas indicate the February-May period of each year considered in the analysis. Note that in panel A co-authored submissions were reported multiple times depending on the number of co-authors. Each author or referee whose gender was not successfully guessed by our algorithm was excluded.
Fig 2
Fig 2. Average change in submissions by research area and age, the latter variable including authors in the first cohort (≤ 20 years from their first publication) in the first group with older authors in the second.
Bars represent standard errors.
Fig 3
Fig 3. Average difference in the proportion of accepted invitations by areas of research and age, the latter variable including authors in the more junior cohort (≤ from their first publication) in the first group with more senior authors in the second.
Bars represent standard errors.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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