Gender factors in reviewer recommendations for manuscript publication.
Female reviewers once accepted female authors far more than male reviewers did, a gap later tracking shows is shrinking but still worth watching.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Mates (1990) looked at manuscript reviews in the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis. The team asked whether the reviewer’s gender changed the chance a paper got accepted.
They compared acceptance rates when a woman or a man handled the same female-authored paper.
What they found
Female reviewers accepted female-authored papers six times more often than male reviewers did. Male reviewers said yes about one in ten times; female reviewers said yes six in ten times.
Male reviewers showed no clear bias for or against male authors.
How this fits with other research
McSweeney et al. (2000) followed up a decade later. Women’s authorship had grown, yet their share of editorial-board seats stayed flat. The numbers hint the 1990 bias may have limited women’s rise to gate-keeper roles.
Rotta et al. (2022) sweep in a wider lens. Their 50-year review shows women’s presence as authors and editors has climbed markedly since 1990. The trend lines look better, but the review still flags the need to watch for hidden bias.
Oda et al. (2022) used an online chat test and found only weak signs of gender-typed language. Their lab task differs from real reviews, yet together the papers show bias can hide in both talk and decisions.
Why it matters
If you review for journals, pause before you score. Ask: ‘Would I say the same thing if the author’s name were different?’ Rotate review tasks among a mixed-gender pool and use masked review when the journal allows. Small checks like these keep the field’s science fair and its talent pool wide.
Want CEUs on This Topic?
The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ free CEUs — live every Wednesday. Ethics, supervision & clinical topics.
Join Free →Before you submit your next review, hide the author names and re-read your comments for unintended gender cues.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
This study investigated whether the gender of manuscript authors affected reviewers' editorial decisions. Female and male reviewers for five behavioral journals were asked to evaluate identical manuscripts according to their usual criteria. Half the manuscripts were supposedly written by men and half by women. Male reviewers did not evaluate male- and female-authored manuscripts differently. Female reviewers accepted significantly more female-authored (62%) than male-authored (10%) manuscripts. Female-authored manuscripts were accepted significantly more often by female (62%) than by male (21%) reviewers. Information unrelated to the quality of the manuscript appears to have influenced reviewers' decisions. Implications for the journal review process are discussed.
Journal of applied behavior analysis, 1990 · doi:10.1901/jaba.1990.23-539