Update. "We conduct a comprehensive comparison between peer-review scores and citation-based metrics across various scientific fields [in Italy]…While both evaluation methods exhibit sex bias, peer review systematically penalizes women more severely than citation-based metrics."
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1751157725001245
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Update. A letter to the editor about a study I posted to this thread 11/23/25: "The suggestion that [the lower #retraction rate for women] is because male researchers undergo more scrutiny, propose bolder ideas and lead larger and more dynamic teams than do female researchers implies that male scientists are better at science. As female scientists, our lived experience points to alternative explanations: elevated rigour and scientific integrity by female scientists or more critical peer review of female-led manuscripts."
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-00120-y
( #paywalled)
Update. "By analyzing all articles indexed in the PubMed database (>36.5 million articles published in >36,000 biomedical and life sciences journals), we show that the median amount of time spent under review is 7.4%–14.6% longer for female-authored articles than for male-authored articles."
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3003574
Update. "Citation counts [for female authors] are on average 5.5% lower than those of comparable male authors…Papers produced by all-female teams receive 56.7% fewer citations than those by all-male teams, while mixed-gender teams achieve a 30.9% citation advantage."
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-4155/paper10.pdf
@petersuber this is a fascinating methodological intervention. Thank you for sharing!
Update. Many studies look at the acceptance rate for articles by women at high-impact journals. This one looks at the submission rate, and finds that women submit significantly fewer articles to these journals than men. (The percentages differ by field.) When asked why, the most common response was that "they were advised not to."
https://elifesciences.org/articles/90049
@petersuber
Hmm, I don't know if I would write this sentence
"By analyzing all articles indexed in the PubMed database (>36.5 million articles published in >36,000 biomedical and life sciences journals), we show that the median amount of time spent under review is 7.4%–14.6% longer for female-authored articles than for male-authored articles, and that differences remain significant after controlling for several factors."
when only 8 millions of the records in PubMed have submitted and accepted dates as part of their metadata
