Peer review and the gender debate

Is peer review truly objective? It has been called the “lifeblood of research in academia” and the “greatest disaster visited upon the scientific community in this century.” Love it or hate it, the peer-review process is the primary quality-control check for research published in mainstream journals today. New research published in eLife now suggests that editors’ subtle gender biases may govern the way peer reviewers are chosen, thus introducing a sociological angle into the purportedly objective process. Quantitative analysis of over 8 years of publication data reveals that both male and female editors appear to favor peer reviewers of the...