Data has consistently shown that women are underrepresented in academia, especially in STEM fields, at top institutions and in senior positions. When it comes to publications, however, there has been conflicting studies. While some say manuscripts authored by women experience longer peer review times, other show the author’s gender has no effect on acceptance delays.
Now, in the largest analysis to date, researchers from the University of Nevada unequivocally show that biomedical and life science articles authored by female researchers spend longer under review—from 7 to 15 days longer compared with male-authored articles. The differences remain significant even after controlling for several factors.
Delays and long-term effects
The study authors focused on papers published in the biomedicine and life sciences industries as they represent the most active research area worldwide, accounting for 36% of research articles produced annually. Additionally, 38% of researchers working in these disciplines globally are women.
The team analyzed all articles indexed in the PubMed database— about 36.5 million articles across 36,388 biomedical and life sciences academic journals between the years 1781 and 2024. Combined, the articles had a total of 160,853,266 authors, of which 29,349,577 were inferred to be female based on their first name.
The study results, published in PLOS Biology, show that the median time under review was 7 days longer for articles with a female first author compared with articles with a male first author. The pattern held true across authorship: review took 13 days longer for articles with a female corresponding author than for articles with a male corresponding author; 15 days longer for articles with a female first author and a female corresponding author than for articles with a male first author and a male corresponding author; and 9 days longer for articles authored by all-female teams than for articles authored by all-male teams.
The authors say the gender gap holds after controlling for a number of confounding factors, including the specific journal, date of publication, number of pages and number of co-authors.
“Accumulated over a woman’s career, [7–15 day] delays can be very substantial,” conclude the study authors.
For instance, for every 50 papers published by a female author, she will have spent on average 350–750 days longer than her male counterparts waiting for reviews and editorial decisions and/or revising manuscripts.
On the other hand
It’s important to note the analyses show that female-authored articles spend longer under review in most, but not all, biomedical and life sciences fields.
The trend is reversed in a minority of fields, including:
- Biophysics
- Hospitals
- Biology
- Molecular Biology
- Chemistry
- Women’s Health
- Genetics
- Health Services
- Environmental Health
- Computational Biology
In these fields, articles with a female first author experience significantly shorter review times than articles with a male first author.
“This raises questions about whether a gender gap is present in other largely unexplored disciplines such as Mathematics and Engineering,” write the study authors. “It also raises questions about what factors contribute to or alleviate the gender gap—what can we learn from fields in which female authors do not experience longer review times?”
Continuing to document the different dimensions of the gender gap in academia and investigating its reasons may indeed help the community devise mitigating strategies.