Gender disparities in eLife’s reviewing process.

A. A schematic of the locations along eLife’s reviewing process wherein imbalanced actions could potentially occur (left to right): Initial Submission (Action 1)–Authors submit their manuscript and suggest potential members of the Board Reviewing Editors (BRE). Within eLife (grey square), a Senior Editor invites BRE members for initial consultation (Action 2) and the Reviewing Editor (RE) gives their opinion (Action 3). This stage of the editorial process is internal (green squares). Full Submission–If the manuscript is retained, the Senior Editor assigns a RE to lead the reviewing process (Action 4). This community-facing stage (blue square) includes overseeing reviewer selection and coordinating an open discussion between the reviewers, the handling Senior Editor and the RE once all individual reviewer reports have been submitted. Appeals–In the event of a rejection, Authors can appeal the initial assessment or the Full Submission decision (Action 5). B. Proportion of BRE service of women and men REs in the entire study period (2017–2019; left) and per study year (right). The gender disparity in BRE service is significantly imbalanced, as indicated by the asterisks. C. Gender imbalance in Initial Submission: Authors suggest more men REs than the men base rate when first submitting a manuscript (Action 1). D. Gender differences in Initial Assessment: Senior Editors equally engage women and men REs in the initial consultation (Action 2). Women REs respond slightly less to Senior Editor’s initial consultation requests (Action 3), and they take longer to respond than men REs. E. Appeal rates (Action 5) in the Initial Assessment (Senior Editors only) and Final Decision (Senior and Reviewing Editors) do not depend on the gender of the handling BRE. W = women (red); M = men (blue); SE = Senior Editor; RE = Reviewing Editor; Dashed arrows–Actions external to eLife, Full grey arrows–Actions within eLife; *p≤0.05, **p≤0.01, ***p≤0.001.</p

Summary of the study’s main findings, speculated causes, and potential solutions.

Notice that the effects reported here were observed even after taking into consideration the reduced numerical representation of women in eLife’s editorial system. These proposed solutions aim to provide potential guidance to stakeholders, enabling them to adopt a proactive and practical approach towards enhancing gender equity in editorial activities.</p

Gender disparities in eLife during full submission (Action 4).

A. Men REs (blue) handle slightly more full submissions per month than women REs (red). B. Compared to manuscript assignment gender base rates (yellow lines; Base rate of RE manuscript assignment: Women– 30.04%; Men– 69.96 %;), Men Senior Editors (SE, top) assign significantly more manuscripts to men REs (blue; 76.57%) and women Senior Editors (bottom) assign significantly more manuscripts to women REs (red; 41.41%). C. SE-BRE Manuscript assignment homophily is prevalent across disciplines. The effect of Senior Editor gender on the assigned RE’s gender across manuscript disciplines, showing preferential assignment of men REs (blue) by men Senior Editors (left) and of women REs (red) by women Senior Editors (right), compared to the gender base rate of RE manuscript assignment (yellow lines; p values are FDR corrected). D. A scatter plot showing the correlation between the Senior Editor homophily effect (the difference in the rate of manuscripts assigned to men REs when the Senior Editor is a man and when the Senior Editor is a woman) and the Manuscript Assignment Imbalance (the difference in the rate of manuscripts assigned to men REs versus to women REs), across disciplines (Pearson r = -0.47, p = 0.049, BF10 = 1.77). Shaded area depicts the 95% confidence interval. *p≤0.05, **p≤0.01, ***p≤0.001.</p

Descriptive statistics and contingency table analysis of senior editor homophily effect across disciplines.

MS–Manuscripts; RE–Reviewing Editor; M–Men; W–Women.</p

S2 Fig -

The fairness of decisions made at various stages of the publication process is an important topic in meta-research. Here, based on an analysis of data on the gender of authors, editors and reviewers for 23,876 initial submissions and 7,192 full submissions to the journal eLife, we report on five stages of the publication process. We find that the board of reviewing editors (BRE) is men-dominant (69%) and that authors disproportionately suggest male editors when making an initial submission. We do not find evidence for gender bias when Senior Editors consult Reviewing Editors about initial submissions, but women Reviewing Editors are less engaged in discussions about these submissions than expected by their proportion. We find evidence of gender homophily when Senior Editors assign full submissions to Reviewing Editors (i.e., men are more likely to assign full submissions to other men (77% compared to the base assignment rate to men RE of 70%), and likewise for women (41% compared to women RE base assignment rate of 30%))). This tendency was stronger in more gender-balanced scientific disciplines. However, we do not find evidence for gender bias when authors appeal decisions made by editors to reject submissions. Together, our findings confirm that gender disparities exist along the editorial process and suggest that merely increasing the proportion of women might not be sufficient to eliminate this bias. Measures accounting for women’s circumstances and needs (e.g., delaying discussions until all RE are engaged) and raising editorial awareness to women’s needs may be essential to increasing gender equity and enhancing academic publication.</div

eLife datasets.

Top: BRE Dataset: contains information relating to the engagement of individual BRE members in the editorial process (identified by gender and year). It includes the following fields: The mean number of days until the Reviewing Editor (RE) responded to a Senior Editor‘s request to participate in the Initial Assessment stage (Days to respond); The RE response rate to Initial Assessment consultation requests (Response Rate); The mean number of consultation requests per month each RE received (# Requests per month); The mean number of full submissions per month each RE handled (# Full submissions per month); The keywords associated with each RE to showcase their expertise (Keywords). Note that the number of full submissions may contain papers that the REs had handled as Guest Editors in the year prior to joining the BRE. Also, some REs may have been on leave, and therefore may have not been consulted for a certain period. Bottom: Manuscript Dataset: contains information relating to each manuscript submission, detailing the manuscript’s outcome in each of the reviewing process stages (identified by gender of the Senior and Reviewing Editors). It includes the following fields: The proportion of men BRE members suggested by the authors (% of Men BRE members); The gender of the Senior Editor handling the manuscript throughout the reviewing process (Gender of Senior Editor); The gender of the RE handling the manuscript in the Full Submission stage (Gender of handling RE); The rate of author appeals at the Initial Assessment stage in which only the Senior Editor identity is revealed to the authors (Initial appeal rate); The rate of author appeals at the Full Submission stage in which both the Senior and Reviewing Editors’ identities are revealed to the authors (Initial appeal rate); The two discipline terms the authors chose, out of 18 possible terms (Discipline 1 & Discipline 2; see Table 1 for details).</p

Additional information of the intersectionality of eLife’s editorial team, retrospective analysis.

A. Women Reviewing Editors (N = 397) serve on average slightly fewer months per year as active BRE members than men (N = 826) do, throughout 2017–2019. B. Senior Editor gender base rate. In 2021 there were significantly more men (N = 53) than women (N = 30) Senior Editors, as indicated by the asterisk. C. Men and women Reviewing Editors career stage. Compared to men REs, women REs were at earlier career stages, as indicated by asterisks. Note that these findings are based on data that was sampled at a different time point than our main datasets, and thus cannot be directly linked to the main findings. D. Reviewing Editor continent of residence. Numbers indicate the mean number of women and men REs from each continent across the three datasets (February 2019, January 2020 and December 2020); dashed yellow line depicts gender balance (50%). There was no evidence for gender disparity in the geographical representation of women and men REs. A-C. Men-blue, women-red; *p≤0.05, **p≤0.01, ***p≤0.001. (TIF)</p

S1 File -

The fairness of decisions made at various stages of the publication process is an important topic in meta-research. Here, based on an analysis of data on the gender of authors, editors and reviewers for 23,876 initial submissions and 7,192 full submissions to the journal eLife, we report on five stages of the publication process. We find that the board of reviewing editors (BRE) is men-dominant (69%) and that authors disproportionately suggest male editors when making an initial submission. We do not find evidence for gender bias when Senior Editors consult Reviewing Editors about initial submissions, but women Reviewing Editors are less engaged in discussions about these submissions than expected by their proportion. We find evidence of gender homophily when Senior Editors assign full submissions to Reviewing Editors (i.e., men are more likely to assign full submissions to other men (77% compared to the base assignment rate to men RE of 70%), and likewise for women (41% compared to women RE base assignment rate of 30%))). This tendency was stronger in more gender-balanced scientific disciplines. However, we do not find evidence for gender bias when authors appeal decisions made by editors to reject submissions. Together, our findings confirm that gender disparities exist along the editorial process and suggest that merely increasing the proportion of women might not be sufficient to eliminate this bias. Measures accounting for women’s circumstances and needs (e.g., delaying discussions until all RE are engaged) and raising editorial awareness to women’s needs may be essential to increasing gender equity and enhancing academic publication.</div

Additional file 1 of LRRK2 kinase inhibition reverses G2019S mutation-dependent effects on tau pathology progression

Additional file 1. Table S1: Characterization of PHF preparations from AD brains. Figure S1: Long-term MLi-2 impacts lung, but not the gross kidney morphology. Figure S2: Quantitative pathology workflow. Figure S3: Quantitative pathology analysis from all mice. Figure S4: Sex differences in tau pathology in wild-type mice. Figure S5: Representative staining from 3 MPI mice. Figure S6: Wild-type compared to LRRK2G2019S mice at 3 MPI. Figure S7: Tau pathology compared by treatment group at 3 MPI. Figure S8: Representative staining from 6 MPI mice. Figure S9: Examination of linear diffusion fits by hemisphere. Figure S10: Microglia quantification in caudal cortex of 6 MPI mice