PUBBLICAZIONE/PUBLICATION

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  • Item type:Publication,
    Reviewing the reviewers: comparison of review quality and reviewer characteristics at the American Journal of Roentgenology Open PDF 
    (2005)
    Kliewer, Mark A.
    ;
    Freed, Kelly S.
    ;
    DeLong, David M.
    ;
    Pickhardt, Perry J.
    ;
    Provenzale, James M.
    OBJECTIVE: The purpose of our study was to determine which manuscript reviewer characteristics are most strongly associated with reviewer performance as judged by editors of the American Journal of Roentgenology (AJR). MATERIALS AND METHODS: At the AJR, manuscript reviews are rated by the journal editors on a subjective scale from 1 (lowest) to 4, on the basis of the value, thoroughness, and punctuality of the critique. We obtained all scores for AJR reviewers and determined the average score for each reviewer. We also sent a questionnaire to 989 reviewers requesting specific information regarding the age, sex, radiology subspecialty, number of years serving as a reviewer, academic rank, and practice type of the reviewer. The demographic profiles were correlated with the average quality score for each reviewer. Statistical analysis included correlation analysis and analysis of variance modeling. Reviewer quality scores were also correlated with the scoring of individual reviews and ultimate disposition of 196 manuscripts sent to the AJR during the same period. RESULTS: Responses to the questionnaire were obtained from 821 reviewers (83.0%), for whom quality scores were available for 714 (87.0%). Correlation analysis shows that the quality score of reviewers strongly correlated with younger age (p = 0.001). A statistically significant correlation between quality score and practice type was seen (p = 0.008), with reviewers from academic institutions receiving higher scores. No significant correlation was found between quality score and sex (p = 0.72), years of reviewing (p = 0.26), academic rank (p = 0.10), or the ultimate disposition of the manuscript (p = 0.40). The quality score of the reviewers showed no variation by subspecialty (p = 0.99). CONCLUSION: The highest-rated AJR reviewers tended to be young and from academic institutions. The quality of peer review did not correlate with the sex, academic rank, or subspecialty of the reviewer.
  • Item type:Publication,
    Ladies First? Not So Fast: Linguistic Sexism in Peer-Reviewed Research. Open PDF 
    (2018)
    Willis, Malachi
    ;
    Jozkowski, Kristen N.
    The words we use reflect and influence our interpretation of the world. The role of gender within a language varies; biases based on social gender are referred to as linguistic sexism. Male firstness is the practice of persistently ordering masculine terms before feminine terms. Because academic writing is mandated to be free of bias, peer-reviewed research should not contain any form of linguistic sexism. To assess the presence of male firstness in academic writing, we examined 862 contemporary articles from 10 social science journals across three disciplines: sexuality, health, and psychology. To assess male firstness, we tallied common gendered pairs (e.g., "women and men"; "male and female") and calculated percentages indicating how often men were presented before women. We found that male firstness bias was present in each of the 10 journals. For individual journals, the percentage of gendered phrases that presented masculine terms first ranged from 57.7% to 88.8%. Sexuality and health journals demonstrated less linguistic sexism than psychology; however, there were no consistent trends between journals within each discipline. We discuss the current presence of male firstness in academic journals and the issues this bias triggers. Recommendations for reducing linguistic sexism in peer-reviewed research are also discussed.
  • Item type:Publication,
    Assessment of potential bias in research grant peer review in Canada Open PDF 
    (CMAJ, 2018)
    Tamblyn, Robyn
    ;
    Girard, Nadyne
    ;
    Qian, Christina J.
    ;
    Hanley, James
    BACKGROUND: Peer review is used to determine what research is funded and published, yet little is known about its effectiveness, and it is suspected that there may be biases. We investigated the variability of peer review and factors influencing ratings of grant applications. METHODS: We evaluated all grant applications submitted to the Canadian Institutes of Health Research between 2012 and 2014. The contribution of application, principal applicant and reviewer characteristics to overall application score was assessed after adjusting for the applicant’s scientific productivity. RESULTS: Among 11 624 applications, 66.2% of principal applicants were male and 64.1% were in a basic science domain. We found a significant nonlinear association between scientific productivity and final application score that differed by applicant gender and scientific domain, with higher scores associated with past funding success and h-index and lower scores associated with female applicants and those in the applied sciences. Significantly lower application scores were also associated with applicants who were older, evaluated by female reviewers only (v. male reviewers only, −0.05 points, 95% confidence interval [CI] −0.08 to −0.02) or reviewers in scientific domains different from the applicant’s (−0.07 points, 95% CI −0.11 to −0.03). Significantly higher application scores were also associated with reviewer agreement in application score (0.23 points, 95% CI 0.20 to 0.26), the existence of reviewer conflicts (0.09 points, 95% CI 0.07 to 0.11), larger budget requests (0.01 points per $100 000, 95% CI 0.007 to 0.02), and resubmissions (0.15 points, 95% CI 0.14 to 0.17). In addition, reviewers with high expertise were more likely than those with less expertise to provide higher scores to applicants with higher past success rates (0.18 points, 95% CI 0.08 to 0.28). INTERPRETATION: There is evidence of bias in peer review of operating grants that is of sufficient magnitude to change application scores from fundable to nonfundable. This should be addressed by training and policy changes in research funding.
  • Item type:Publication,
    A Comparison of Plastic Surgery Authorship Trends Under Single Versus Double-Blinded Review Open PDF 
    (J Surg Res, 2024)
    S, Subramanian
    ;
    Rs, Maisner
    ;
    N, Patel
    ;
    A, Song
    ;
    L, Yuan
    Abstract Introduction: Research is key to academic advancement in plastic surgery. However, access to publication opportunities may be inequitable as seen in other fields. We compared authorship trends of plastic surgery manuscripts that underwent single-blinded review (SBR) versus double-blinded review (DBR) to identify potential disparities in publication opportunities. Methods: Publications from two plastic surgery journals using SBR and two using DBR from September 2019 to September 2021 were evaluated. Name and institution of the article's first and senior author and journal's editor-in-chief (EIC) were recorded. Chi-squared and Fisher's exact analyses were used to compare author characteristics between SBR and DBR articles. Results: Of 2500 manuscripts, 65.7% underwent SBR and 34.3% underwent DBR. SBR articles had higher percentages of women as first authors (31.9% versus 24.3%, P < 0.001) but lower percentages of first (50.7% versus 71.2%, P < 0.001) and senior (49.6% versus 70.3%, P < 0.001) authors from international institutions. First (26.0% versus 12.9%, P < 0.001) and senior (27.9% versus 18.0%, P = 0.007) authors of SBR articles tended to have more plastic surgery National Institutes of Health funding. Journals using SBR tended to have higher rates of authorship by EICs or authors sharing institutions with the EIC (P ≤ 0.005). Conclusions: While associated with greater female first authorship suggesting potential efforts toward gender equity in academia, SBR of plastic surgery articles tends to favor authors from institutions with higher National Institutes of Health funding and disadvantage authors from international or lower-resourced programs. Careful consideration of current peer-review proceedings may make publication opportunities more equitable.
  • Item type:Publication,
    Why are women underused in the JECH peer review process? Open PDF 
    (2003)
    Del Carmen Davo, M.
    ;
    Vives, C.
    ;
    Alvarez-Dardet, C.
    The quality of peer review is an essential part of the scientific process1 and nowadays its evaluation is an emergent area of research. The gender perspective is however, still rarely integrated in this kind of study. There is empirical evidence about sex bias in choosing referees. Women are still less required by editors than men in peer review processes. As other studies have shown, male reviewers took significantly longer to return manuscripts than did their female counterparts and male reviewers recommend acceptance and rejection at higher rates than their female counterparts, who were more prone to revisions. The under use of women as reviewers seems then not justified by any quality criteria, as has been shown as well by the measurement of variables of time to answer and referees recommendations to authors. In addition, the promotion of gender parity in the peer review process could contribute to a reduction in the traditional invisibility of women in scientific knowledge development. This study has been done with the main objective to detect gender bias in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health (JECH) peer review process and to identify differences, if any, between peer reviews with a gender perspective. The analysis includes the editors perceived quality of the review plus the other variables suggested by other studies as time to answer and referees recommendations to authors.