Why does gender inequality in academic publishing persist? Lessons and recommendations

Abstract

Data from leading scholarly journals and publishing houses show that the gender gap in academic publishing is deep and persistent. This has considerable consequences for individual careers and for academic knowledge across disciplines. As European political science journals have started to publish their gender data for submissions and publication processes, this article evaluates this trend and the conclusions from a recent symposium on ‘The gendered distribution of authors and reviewers in major European political science journals’. It summarises a list of ‘key gender data’ that journal editors are encouraged to publish on an annual basis to achieve a more accurate and comprehensive picture for individual journals and across the discipline. It also includes suggestions for editors to ensure better citations of female scholars in their journals.

Keywords

Academia citations gender inequality publishing

Introduction

The gender gap in academia is deep and persistent. Fewer women than men decide to pursue an academic career and find it harder to get recognised and promoted within many academic disciplines (Alter et al., 2020; Huang et al., 2020). Biases are still found in salaries and funding (e.g. Conger, 2020; Gritzbach, 2019; Larivière et al., 2011; Leahey, 2007; Shen, 2013), in the representation of females in senior positions (Huang et al., 2020), in workload distributions (Alter et al., 2020), in feedback and evaluations of teaching as well as in leadership roles (Alter et al., 2020; Boring 2017) and in academic citations and publishing (Dion et al., 2018; Maliniak et al., 2013).

But how is this even possible? Gender (in)equality has been discussed for several decades, data is increasingly available, and most prominent academic institutions emphasise a strong commitment to diversity and equality. Yet, we are very far from having solved the imbalance in gender representation in political science, let alone academia as a whole. How can this be?

Central to any individual scholarly career as well as progression in our collective academic knowledge is the question of research publications. It is hence relevant to understand to what extent and in what ways gender biases exists in academic journal publishing. Leading political science journals have started to publish data on gender differences in submissions, review processes and editorial work (Barnett et al., 2022). Some journals now report their gender distribution figures on an annual basis as part of their overall performance indicators (ibid). This article evaluates this trend and looks at the performance of European political science journals and the conclusions from a recent European Political Science (2022) symposium on ‘The gendered distribution of authors and reviewers in major European political science journals’ (Stockemer, 2022). It argues that making data available is the first and necessary step in the endeavour to combat unequal representation in academic publishing. Yet, we are not yet in a place where we have the consistent and comprehensive data needed, nor have we reached conclusions about the right interventions on the basis of this data. This article seeks to give some guidelines for both the data and interventions required. It summarises a list of ‘key gender data’ that journal editors are encouraged to publish on an annual basis in order to achieve are more accurate and comprehensive picture of gender issues within individual journals as well as across the discipline. Last, it is a suggestion for editors to actively ensure better citations of female scholars in their journals.¹

The gender gap in European political science journals

We know from the US political science that there is an underrepresentation of female authors in academic journal publishing, that this bias is persistent across years and across journals and that the bias is by no stretch proportional to the overall representation of female academics within the discipline (Breuning and Sanders, 2007; Teele and Thelen, 2017).

In Europe, similar patterns to the general political science literature were found in the ECPRs 2020 reporting for the journals European Journal of Political Science, European Political Science Review and European Political Science. Deschouwer (2020) offers some critical insights into the changes needed on the basis of this reporting. The EPS 2021 roundtable ‘The gendered distribution of authors and reviewers in major European political science journals’ at the ECPR General Conference took an additional step in the debate, as four prominent European political science journals for the first time shared and critically discussed their data on gender distribution in authorship and review processes over the years. Each of the four journals, consisting of European Union Politics, Journal of Common Market Studies (JCMS), South European Politics and Society and West European Politics, reported their respective gender data but also offered their own take and additional insights into particular topics apparent within their publication processes. Based on the presentations and discussions at the roundtable, the journal editors (in collaboration with co-authors, in some cases) published their results as a special issue of European Political Science (2022). More specifically, European Union Politics reported their gender data and also contributed with a novel investigation into how female authors and reviewers communicate in their submissions, reviews and correspondence with the editorial office compared to their male colleagues (Bettecken et al., 2022). JCMS added to their gender data report a striking analysis of how much the gender bias in European political science costs in terms of unfulfilled and unrealised intellectual capital and research potential in the field due to the lower level of female scholarly submissions (Haastrup et al., 2022). West European Politics provide important details regarding developments in author categories as well as highlight a significant gap in reviewer invitations sent to female academics (Martinsen et al., 2022). South European Politics and Society add further insights to this as they show how female academics are represented in various compositions of author teams (Verney and Bosco, 2022). Taken together, and considered in light of the conclusions from the broader political science literature, the findings are compelling.

Publications

Female scholars publish significantly less in European political science journals than male scholars. While the reporting by the four journals varies in terms of how author categories are composed and whether focus is on submissions or publication rates, the picture is nevertheless clear that a considerable gender gap exists: in European Union Politics an average of 34% of submissions were by female authors during the years 2007–2019; JCMS reports that since 2010, 38% of submissions have had female corresponding authors (and likely a higher authorship rate); West European Politics reports a 36.7% in female authorship during the years 2011–2021; and 35.6% of authors were female in publications by South European Society and Politics during the years 2011–2020. When looking at the historical developments in this data, figures have for the most part improved, yet as European Union Politics highlights, across author categories, this is only a few percentage points over the years since the 2000s despite the significant increase in numbers of female scholars. Women are still far from publishing in top journals proportionally to their presence in European political science as a discipline².

Importantly, this gender gap in publishing is overwhelmingly found in the submission rates, not in terms of successful publications: on average, female scholars submit far fewer journal articles than male, but are in all of the four journals at similar publication rates with their male colleagues once they have been admitted into the review process. In other words, there do not appear to be any editorial review biases, nor are there – obviously – any criticism to place on the skills and abilities of female scholars to successfully publish their articles once manuscripts have been accepted for review by the journals.

The missing submissions from female academics are an important issue for editorial teams and scholarly institutions to address in a concerted effort to ensure more female participation and recognition in European political science. Each of the four journals who took part in the forum discussion acknowledged this need and constructively proposed steps to improve on the female submission rates. However, one very important aspect which is missing from the data of the European journals but which we know from general political science journals is that the differences in submission rates between men and women may be significantly more pronounced for senior academics than academics in more junior positions (Breuning and Sanders, 2007; Djupe et al., 2019). Such a pattern has been observable in political science for the past two decades and raises some very critical questions which require investigation in European political science journals as well. The persistence of ‘reverse submission numbers’ for female scholarly careers in political science means that we are not looking at a generational challenge, but rather at a structural issue: female scholars start out with higher publication rates but then on average seem to systematically decline in their submissions of journal articles as they progress in their careers. We can deduct from Alter et al. (2020) and Huang et al. (2020) that this may correlate with workload distributions and the fact that senior female academics often take on more administrative positions in their academic institutions than their male colleagues. It could also reflect a change in tactics by women regarding where and what to publish: the choice between book manuscripts, journal articles, special issues and edited volumes and other publication formats may change as careers progress (Samuels and Teele, 2021). The final possibility is that female scholars simply do not feel that incentives are strong enough for continuing their publication ambitions in top journals at a similar rate as men if these are then not also rewarded in a comparable manner to their male colleagues such as in promotions, salary contributions or research awards (Teele and Thelen, 2017). We will discuss this further below. Yet, what is clear is that in order to establish the full picture and understand the mechanisms at play behind these gender gaps in authorship distributions, we need more detailed and comparable data for European political science journals and publishing houses with regards not only to gender and publication rates, but also academic positions (i.e. seniority) and institutional affiliations of submitting authors. At the individual level, it would also be useful to understand how publication rates within the ‘female academics’ category are distributed; surely, there will be considerable variation with notable superstar authors at the top end, whom may merit further attention in our analysis of representation in the field.

Citations

Another data omission that must be highlighted is that none of the journals – neither in Europe nor political science journals more broadly – report citation data in their gender data. This is rather surprising granted the prominence of citations in academia. Yet, we know that women are less cited compared to men across the discipline (Dion et al., 2018; Maliniak et al., 2013), and some studies have shown that this is particularly pronounced also within the top political science journals (e.g. Breuning and Sanders, 2007). It would be a straightforward task for editors to be transparent about this issue, and:

compile the data on references to female/male/non-binary/others authors for all articles published in their journals;

proactively encourage and make recommendations for more representative referencing in articles admitted into the review process;

report an annual ‘gender citation score’ which captures the aggregate citations for male and female authors – across authorship categories published in a journal.

If editorial teams were to adopt such a policy, where they provide aggregate data on citations and proactively encourage more references of female scholars in individual articles as part of the review process, we should expect to see a significant boost in female representation in the journals within a 3-year period. Of course, editors cannot make specific and named recommendations of literature they would like to see included in papers under review. But editorial teams may encourage reviewers to consider the issue of representative referencing in articles, and reviewers can make recommendations for literature they would find relevant to include. Likewise, if authors are aware that journals start to prioritise gender and diversity in their citation rates, they would be more inclined to double-check bibliographies and seek to contribute to a more representative referencing. Such a move to create general awareness combined with specific considerations of relevant literature would no doubt have an effect in the individual journals as well as an accumulative influence across the discipline. In turn, gender citation data would then likely have further spillover effects into greater recognition of female scholars’ work at their academic institutions and more broadly within their research communities.

Author categories

In addition to the important aggregate data on gender representation in journal article submissions, reviews and publications, the data from the four European journals show interesting and notable changes in authorship categories over the years: team submissions have increased considerably, and mixed-gender author teams have risen drastically across the board for all four European political science journals.

However, across political science journals, there are some variations as to how author categories are defined. Many simply distinguish between single-authored male/female and co-authored papers including female/male scholars. Therefore, an important takeaway from the forum is the very useful categorisation by Martinsen et al. (2022) who suggest a distinction between six author categories that make it possible to get important additional details about gender dynamics in publications and citations: They propose to report authorships either as (i) single-author female; (ii) single-author male; (iii) two-author, lead-female; (iv) two-author, lead-male; (v) co-author, lead-female and (vi) co-author, lead-male. I include this categorisation below in the recommendation to editorial journal teams for annual publications of their ‘key gender data’.

So what do we find from this data? Looking at the reports from the four journals, co-authored submissions that include a female scholar (as either lead- or co-author) have grown considerably over the years but still account for less than 40% across the 2007–2019 years reported by European Union Politics; JCMS report that 44% of their team authored submissions (which constitutes 55% of submissions) include female authors; West European Politics show that from 2015 to2020, their overall female submission rates vary between 27% and35% and South European Politics and Society show that 38% of their received submissions include a female (co-)author. The growth from previous years reflects the trend in political science journals more broadly as more women have gradually entered academia over the past two decades and as co-authorship has become more common within the discipline (e.g. Alter et al. 2020). On the other hand, male-only teams (including single-authored submissions) have notably decreased, although the significance of this varies by journal, and all-male authorship still continues to dominate submission rates today across the journals. In contrast, all journals report a notable low level of all-female publications or single-authored female publications, which is also the case for publications in political science journals more broadly (Teele and Thelen, 2017).

The drastic increase in mixed-gender co-authorships is generally applauded as a sign that things are improving for female representation in journal publishing as the aggregate number of articles with at least one woman as lead- or co-author have undeniably increased. However, the changes in authorship categories and the increase in female presence in authorship teams yet consistently low levels of female single-authored articles require some thought: Teele and Thelen (2017) flag that female and male authors do not benefit equally from trends towards co-authorship, and that co-authorship has in some instances even been found to hurt female – but not male – scholars’ recognition in their work. For example, it appears that while male scholars’ productivity in terms of publication rates go up as they take part in more co-author teams, the same is not the case for women. It is also apparent that men more frequently get cited as either lead- or co-authors, while female scholars are only more likely to be cited if they are lead authors. Within economics, the disadvantages have been found to be even more pronounced, in particular with regards to publications by female scholars with a strong profile in quantitative and formal methods (Sarsons et al., 2021). One can speculate whether this could also apply to strands of political science where such methods are similarly pronounced.

Nevertheless, as Martinsen et al. (2022) stress, the increase in the aggregate female representation across authorship categories should be welcomed as it is, after all, improving on the overall representation in publication rates. The increase in mixed-gender co-authored articles is also a positive development in another respect: once admitted into the review process, mixed co-authored papers have a higher probability of successful publication than single-authored submissions, and also performs better than all-female co-authored papers, but does not outperform all-male author teams in the data reported by European Union Politics and West European Politics.

It is key to note these discrepancies in the different authorship categories and make both individual scholars, journals and academic institutions aware that a gap exists with respect to both submission and publication rates. They may then consider how to take such information into account in recognition during promotion processes, research awards, salary negotiations and contributions, etc. Female scholars themselves may also consider their options on the background of such data: whether they receive the appropriate recognition for their contributions and how they may be strategic when pursuing single-authored and co-authored papers in prominent journals.

The review process and communication by female scholars

Political science journals have experienced an increasing number of submissions over the years, and the four European political science journals that took part in the symposium all report considerable growth in the number of articles they receive. This increases the workload for editorial teams and for reviewers once a paper has been admitted into the review process, and journals have had to make adjustments to accommodate the increased workload and competition over the years.

An important, and reassuring, conclusion from the data from all four journals is that there are no gender biases in editorial decisions of desk-rejections/publication, nor are biases detectable in the recommendations for ‘R&R’/‘publication’/’rejection’ coming out of the double/triple-blind review processes (Bettecken et al., 2022; Grossman, 2020; Haastrup et al., 2022; Martinsen et al., 2022; Verney and Bosco, 2022). Single-authored male and female authors are equally likely to have their manuscript rejected at the submission stage, while co-authored pieces are more likely to be accepted for review. Of these, all-male and mixed-gender co-authored papers are the most successful at both the submission, resubmission and acceptance stages, and by far outnumber the other categories of authorship. These findings correspond with investigations into other political science journals which also show that editorial decisions and review processes in top journals are gender neutral on the parameters of submission acceptance and publication decisions (Teele and Thelen, 2017).

However, a finding which was very surprising to the editorial teams from the four journals is the extent of bias in the number of invitations sent out to potential reviewers. Not all political science journals look into how often female scholars are invited to act as referees on manuscripts, but all of the four journals included here report large discrepancies in how many women to men they have in their ‘reviewer pool’, as well as how many invitations are sent out to female compared to male reviewers from this pool. Relative to their numbers, female scholars are still not invited to act as referees as frequently as men although it should be mentioned that some journals, such as European Union Politics and JCMS, pro-actively look to ensure representation in reviewer teams for individual manuscripts. Still, both of these two journals have only half the number of female to male reviewers in their data. West European Politics, on the other hand, reported interesting details regarding how female scholars are more likely to decline on reviewer invitations than male scholars, and suggest this may have to do with a much higher rate of requests to women than to men for contributions to their academic institutions and research communities (Martinsen et al., 2022).

Another issue that unmasks a considerable gender difference is an entirely new contribution to the debate presented by Bettecken et al. (2022) when they investigate the way female authors and reviewers communicate in their submissions, reviews and correspondence with the editorial team at European Union Politics. A number of findings from this study are relevant to highlight here: First, they find that male authors use on average more words in their author responses and cover letters than females. Interestingly, this relationship is reversed and significant when only reviews are considered. This means that while female authors use less words to introduce their research in cover letters or defend their work in their author response, they use significantly more words when reviewing other authors’ work (Bettecken et al. 2022). Across all correspondence documents, women also use more cautious and structuring language than men, and the contrast to their male colleagues is very stark – three times the use of cautious wordings. Interestingly, however, this finding does not apply to female authors’ reviewer response letters. Conversely, men much more frequently use first-person pronouns in reviews and editorial correspondences – which the authors interpret as a sign of male reviewers being more inclined to talk about themselves when reviewing other people's work.

Key gender data

In sum, bringing together the results and insights from the contributions by the four journals as well as the key conclusions highlighted from recent reviews of general political science journals, we can list the publication and review data needed from journals in order to consistently and comprehensively track the representation of women in European political science journals. I will refer to this as the ‘key gender data’ in political science publishing and suggest this to be part of annual journal reporting by editorial teams. The ‘key gender data’ must include the following components for the categories of ‘female/male/non-binary or other’:

On publications:

Gender publication data across author categories

-(i) single-author female; (ii) single-author male; (iii) two-author, lead-female; (iv) two-author, lead-male; (v) co-author, lead-female and (vi) co-author, lead-male;

Gender citation data per article;

Author academic position

-(i) assistant professor; (ii) un-tenured associate professor; (iii) tenured associate professor; (iv) full professor; (v) other;

Author academic affiliation

-(i) research university; (ii) master’s colleges and universities; (iii) Baccalaureate colleges; (iv) other academic; (v) non-academic.

On review processes:

Gender data on distribution rates from submissions through to rejection/acceptance

-Distributions across submissions, R&Rs, acceptances and rejections;

Gender data on correspondence with editorial office

-Correspondence documents per submitted article;

Gender data on reviewers

-Reviewer's academic position and

-Reviewer's institutional affiliations;

Gender data on reviewer reports

-Recommendations for representative literature and

-Length and number of recommendations/comments provided.

Taken together, the key gender data can provide important insight into the actual – rather than perceived – gender representation in individual journals and be an important tool for editorial teams to address any biases uncovered by these numbers. With the key gender data in hand, editors can: (a) get a comprehensive insight into the parameters of gender inequality within individual journals as well as comparatively within the discipline; (b) identify where action is needed in publication and review processes; (c) provide details to academic research communities and academic institutions regarding gender patterns and structural biases in submissions, publications and reviews, and how these may be addressed most efficiently in a collective effort by scholars, editorial teams and universities.

Certainly, the editorial teams at the four journals which took part in the forum all drew important lessons from their own data, which they had not previously collected and considered. Indeed, one editor admitted to having thought that there would be no considerable biases in the journal (s)he is responsible for, and has been surprised by the profound gaps within the journal as well as across the discipline.

Conclusion

Academic journals are starting to collect – and in a growing number of cases also publish – their data on gender representation in publications and review processes. The broader picture from across academic disciplines shows a lot of variation, but nevertheless brings a sobering message of systematic biases in academic authorship which has only slightly improved over the past two decades. This is despite the fact that female scholars have significantly increased their presence in most academic disciplines.

As editorial teams are now starting to take this issue seriously in political science, and acknowledge the lost potential in research contributions by female scholarly talents, this article has drawn up a set of recommendations for the data and interventions required to improve on female academics’ contribution rates and recognition within European political science. In sum, the recommendations include a list of ‘key gender data’ which editorial teams are encouraged to use as a checklist for annual reporting of gender representation in submissions, reviews and publications. The important and overlooked issue of gender citation data across author categories is included within this list Journals do not currently include gender citation data in their annual reporting, despite the essential role citations play for individual scholars, academic institutions and research communities. The publication of gender citation data has the potential to significantly boost submissions rates and recognition of female scholars’ work in journal articles and improve on the citation biases found across political science journals.

The publication of journals’ key gender data in publications and review processes is a game changer. Journal editors do not know the degree to which their journals have a gender bias until they see the data. The experience from the four journals included in this article uncovered a range of issues that the editorial teams were either not aware of or only knew about in parts. For example, the editor of European Union Politics has openly admitted to not being aware of the significance in the difference of submission rates between male and female authors and has subsequently pledged to promote the journal more proactively to female scholars. Similarly, the all-female editorial team from another journal courageously stated at the roundtable when they presented some very low numbers for their female reviewer invitations: ‘While we are a team of female editors, we didn’t even know we had such a bias in our reviewer pool and invitations, it is clearly a blind angle on our part. … Good thing that we looked at the data.’

The short message is therefore that data is needed, and behavioural change is required. Journals are currently making leaps with the former, and this article hopes to have contributed with some guidelines for the structure and content of the data necessary. Behavioural change is a different and complicated matter. But it may come if the key gender data becomes a permanent feature of annual reporting by the established journals, and if academic institutions and senior faculty start to recognise the structural biases in gender representation uncovered by these figures.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Sara Hagemann

Notes

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