Study explores gender gap in authorship, peer review process
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BARCELONA, Spain — Despite the increased presence of women in ophthalmology, a gender gap still exists in publication authorship and the peer review process, according to a study presented here.
“Very recent studies have shown that women-authored articles are less cited, that female ophthalmologists were given less opportunities to gain surgical competence during their training, and that the rate of female senior authorship does not follow the increasing trend of females in the ophthalmology workforce,” Marta Jiménez-García, PhD, said at the European Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgeons meeting.
By exploring the articles published over the last 5 years in the top 30 ophthalmology journals, Jiménez- García and colleagues found that the proportion of women first authors or last authors vs. men varied considerably between countries. While Belgium, Sweden and Norway have achieved substantial parity, Italy, Japan and Iran have the lowest female representation. Thailand was the only country in which women published more than men.
Topics such as amblyopia, retinopathy of prematurity, low vision and cell studies had some of the highest numbers of female authors, while the lowest female authorship was observed for cataract, refractive surgery and retina. Retina, the Journal of Cataract & Refractive Surgery and the Journal of Refractive Surgery were found to have the lowest female representation.
Gender was found to affect the average time to have an article reviewed and published.
“Considering all the articles, having a first author female added almost 4 days to the review time and 6 extra days if the last author was also female. First author female publications took 5 extra days to get accepted,” Jiménez-García said. “In the end, there was no significant difference to get a paper published.”
Similar delays were present when only English names were analyzed but were not significant when the author’s gender was not easily identifiable, including cases in which Asian names were used.
“The explanation of our findings is very likely complex and multifactorial,” Jiménez- García said.
After analyzing potential causes and remedies, she concluded that the disparities that persist can be minimized by increasing awareness within the community.
“There is no lack of female role models in vision science, and you have many of them here,” she said. “Our results should not discourage women from continuing or starting a career in vision research.”
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Jiménez-García M. Influence of author’s gender on the peer-review process in vision science: An analysis of the top 30 ophthalmology journals in 2016-2020. Presented at: European Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgeons meeting; Sept. 6-10, 2024; Barcelona, Spain.
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