Sexism and peer review: impact factor matters.
Thanks to alert reader Jill, who sent along this article:
Christine Wennerås and Agnes Wold: "Nepotism and sexism in peer-review", Nature, Vol 387, 22 May 1997, pp 341-343.
I did a search on pubmed and found a few more relevant articles, some in response to this earlier one:
Out of about 65 hits when I searched for 'peer review gender bias'. I encourage you to go do your own search. In some ways it was gratifying to see that other people had been angry enough to write letters to Nature- and elsewhere- to address this issue.
But they don't all agree, of course. Some are very defensive about analyzing their own best practices and claiming there's no bias whatsoever.
After reading these, the one area where they all seem to agree is that men generally publish in 'higher-impact' journals than woman do.
We all know why that might be:
1. Nepotism in publishing. It's an old boys network, therefore the boys are more likely to know each other.
2. Uh, women read more than men. Come on, you know it's generally true. We read faster and we read more.
So we're likely to think it doesn't matter so much where our papers go, because people will read them anyway.
And the truth is- they will. At least, other women will!
What I found most compelling was the direct comparison in the 1997 study where they looked at number of citations vs. supposed impact factor of the journal.
Hint: Impact factor doesn't actually correlate with 'scientific productivity.'
But hey, it's always good to be reminded that I have to be, what was it, 65-131 points better than my male counterpart.
This goes under category of 'bing cherry on top of the icing on top of a bad day.'
A.k.a why my best friend quit science: why continue to seek approval from people we're pretty sure aren't very smart (the men in charge), when you can leave science and do something else where you'll be appreciated?