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On Monday 10^th September, we gathered at the Wellcome Trust to explore the issues surrounding this year’s theme of ‘diversity and inclusion in peer review’. 

Last week, we opened peer review week with a stimulating discussion about peer review and the need to improve diversity and equality within it. Jim Smith, Director of Science at Wellcome and Wellcome Open Research advisory board member, chaired the event.

Jim began by presenting the moral and business arguments, stating that it should be a fair process and one that provides equal opportunities for all. He went on to say that we must also consider the benefit for science itself, where we will gain better results when a broader community of voices share their thoughts on research, and it is only through such interaction will we be more likely to increase reliability.

A striking balance

Michael Markie, Publisher, F1000 Platforms, presented the gender diversity in peer review on Wellcome Open Research (WOR), an innovative platform that puts the authors in control of the peer review process. The data provided a positive outlook in terms of author submissions, with an almost 50/50 gender split (51% male and 47% female), which is much more balanced when compared to other traditional publishers.

This striking balance could be due to the opportunities offered by WOR that aren’t provided by other more traditional journals (particularly the author-driven publishing process), and the wide spectrum of article types. However, there is a gender bias when it comes to peer review.

WOR uses a process where the peer reviewers are either suggested by the authors, or an AI tool, or suggested by the editorial team. The author then makes the final decision and no matter what method of selection was used to suggest the reviewers, the statistics for gender balance remained roughly the same (25-35% female reviewers) as the industry standard.

Michael went on to explain that WOR will aim to improve diversity and inclusion in peer review by being more explicit to encourage awareness and help authors to make a conscious effort; to be more proactive in diversifying their reviewer pool; and to collect information on gender and ethnicity.

All the data for the peer review study is open and can be found here.

No silver bullet

Gemma Tracey, from the Diversity and Inclusion team at Wellcome, stated that she is not surprised by the gender imbalance in peer review as this reflect the under-representation of women in the academic science and research community.

Men dominate the science, technology, and engineering (SET) research sector, in particular at senior levels Only 19.3% of UK professors in SET fields are women. Looking at Wellcome grant funding, what is interesting is that 57% of studentships are awarded to men, but as we progress along the career pipeline the proportion of women being funded by Wellcome decreases. Only 25% of Wellcome Principal Fellowships were held by women in 2016-17.

While the evening’s focus was on gender in peer review, Gemma noted the risk that diversity and inclusion work becomes only about women in science, when we know other groups also face barriers. Take ethnicity for example, only 0.5% of UK professors are Black. Wellcome Trust is committed to advancing diversity and inclusion, in relation to who it funds and employs. They see this as part of their organisational mission to ensure great ideas thrive to improve human health. Currently, the lack of diversity means we are missing out on some of those great ideas.

The Wellcome Trust sees that it has a responsibility to make a difference, which is why Wellcome’s Board of Governors made Diversity and Inclusion a strategic priority that will initially dedicate five years and up to £12.5 million to help ensure diversity of experience, thought and approach.

Both Michael and Gemma’s slides can be found here.

The panel

Following these enlightening presentations, came further discussion about gender and country bias by our panellists Jocalyn Clark, Executive Editor of The Lancet; Kebede Deribe, Wellcome Intermediate Fellow in Public Health and Tropical Medicine at the University of Sussex; Sonia Gandhi, Wellcome Intermediate Clinical Fellow in Neurodegenerative Diseases at the Francis Crick Institute; and Dr Victoria Male, Sir Henry Dale Fellow in Innate Lymphoid Cell Biology at UCL. Below are some of the key topics covered.

Imposter syndrome

When asked about being paid to review, Sonia Gandhi explained that it might offer more of an incentive, but she turns down reviewing because of time restraints. So being paid wouldn’t necessarily influence her decision as it is more a matter of what she can physically fit into her schedule.

Continuing this stem of thought, Jocalyn Clark added that women are less likely to agree to review, which can be due to demands of their home life responsibilities. However, they often provide higher quality peer reviews when they do accept, while men speak out more authoritatively about subject areas they actually know little about.

Geographical bias

Kebede Deribe explained that lots of studies, including those published in the Lancet and Jama have shown that women are underrepresented. He thinks that editors should be given their statistics so that they can understand their unconscious biases.

He also spoke about the bias of reviewers from English speaking countries. He mentioned a study from the Lancet that found that African reviewers were predominantly from South Africa with 40% of reviewers and in South America, 70% are from Brazil.

Giving credit where credit is due

Michael Markie explained that they ‘ve seen that the full transparency offered by WOR’s open peer review is inclusive and offers more constructive feedback on the research. Victoria Male agrees with this, having done both transparent and closed peer reviews, she shared that she spent more time on her review when it was for an open model compared to closed peer review.

Victoria also suggested that we could promote younger researchers by introducing them to the community. Hopefully by circulating this knowledge around could help early career researchers gain recognition, growing awareness of new expertise in all the disciplines.

A cultural shift

We need to disrupt the system and change how things are done. Gemma Tracey said that we need to let go of our own biases, such as making a judgement call on researchers’ abilities by the institution they attended, otherwise we’re unlikely to see the diversity we want to see and know we need. We all need to challenge our assumptions about how we define excellence and potential.

Food for thought

The evening’s discussion gave us a lot to mull over, addressing where some of the main issues lie in peer review and possible solutions to improve it, such as peer review training through co-reviewing; including early career researchers on editorial boards and circulating early career researchers’ names to the research community.

Speaking about solutions, Lilian Hunt, Project Manager at EDIS, an attende at the event provides six actions she thinks should be the first steps to diversify peer review.