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How Gendered Is the Peer-Review Process? A Mixed-Design Analysis of Reviewer Feedback

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 August 2021

Thomas König Open the ORCID record for Thomas König [Opens in a new window]  and
Guido Ropers Open the ORCID record for Guido Ropers [Opens in a new window]
Thomas König
Affiliation:
University of Mannheim, Germany
Guido Ropers
Affiliation:
University of Mannheim, Germany
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Abstract

A fair peer-review process is essential for the integrity of a discipline’s scholarly standards. However, underrepresentation of scholarly groups casts doubt on fairness, which currently is raising concerns about a gender bias in the peer-review process of premier scholarly journals such as the American Political Science Review (APSR). This study examines gender differences in APSR reviewing during the period 2007–2020. Our explorative analysis suggests that male reviewers privilege male authors and female reviewers privilege female authors, whereas manuscripts reviewed by both male and female reviewers indicate less gender bias. Using within-manuscript variation to address confounding effects, we then show that manuscripts reviewed by both male and female reviewers receive a more positive evaluation by female reviewers in terms of recommendation and sentiment, but they experience a marginally longer duration. Because these effects are not specific for type of authorship, we recommend that invitations to review should reflect mixed compositions of peers, which also may avoid overburdening an underrepresented group with review workload.

Type
Article
Information
PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 55 , Issue 1 , January 2022 , pp. 135 - 141
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Political Science Association

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Supplementary material: Link

König and Ropers Dataset

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https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/LMDUEQ
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