1. Gender Differences in Peer Reviewers Between Three Prestigious Medical Journals
Parisa Mortaji, Clare Batty, Eileen Barrett, MD
Department of Internal Medicine, UNM School of Medicine
Research Club
3/20/18

2. Background
Declining gender inequalities has led to an increased number of women physicians
Despite this, women are not equally represented in academic medicine across many domains
Bias has been shown to be a contributing factor.
Peer review has recently been shown to be vulnerable to gender bias.

3. Prior studies
Journals of American Geophysical Union (AGU) between
Frontiers journals between
both concluded that women are underrepresented as peer reviewers
Two main reasons were proposed as to why this is the case:
editors appoint fewer females to review
Bigger contributing factor
women decline more invitations to review than do men
women decline invitations at a slightly higher rate than men, with the main reason being workload
This was refuted by another study
Conclusion: editors should send out more invitations to potential female peer reviewers

4. Study Questions
Is there a gender difference between peer reviewers for three prestigious medical journals?
Does the proportion of female peer reviewers represent their proportion in the physician population?
Hypothesis: the proportion of female peer reviewers will not represent their proportion in the physician population.

5. Team and Roles
Parisa Mortaji
Clare Batty
Eileen Barrett, MD

6. Planning/Study Phase
A compendium of 2001, 2006, 2011 and 2016 peer reviewers retrieved from the web for NEJM, JAMA, Annals of Internal Medicine
Gender of peer reviewers determined by inference, and if unknown, by an internet search. Unidentifiable reviewers excluded from the analysis.
The number of female peer reviewers was compared with the number of male reviewers for each journal.
Analyses controlled for the number of female physicians in the population.
Binomial analyses were performed.

12. Study Limitations Representation of one specialty society
Utilization of only three medical journals
Inability to account for other professions that contribute as peer reviewers

13. UNM QI and Patient Safety Goal
2016 Strategic Goals
Goal 12 – Improve staff and faculty engagement and satisfaction

14. Next Steps
Inviting more female peer reviewers to provide recommendations on manuscripts
Encouraging women to accept invitations to serve as peer reviewers

15. What I would do with my project if I had unlimited resources
Study gender differences in peer reviewers in other specialties
Remove peer reviewers that are not MDs to provide for more accurate data

16. Questions?

17. References
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Helmer M, Schottdorf M, Neef, A, & Battaglia, D. Gender bias in scholarly peer review. eLife. 2017; 6, e
Lerback, J, Hanson, B. Journals invite too few women to referee. Nature Jan; 541(7638):
Pasko T, Smart DR. Physician Characteristics and Distribution in the US    edition. Division of Survey and Data Resources, American Medical Association, 2003.
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Smart DR. Physician Characteristics and Distribution in the US 2013. 2013 edition. Division of Survey and Data Resources, American Medical Association, 2013.
Young A, Chaudhry HJ, Pei X, et al. A Census of Actively Licensed Physicians in the United States, Journal of Medical Regulation. 2017; 103(2): 7.