Hidden connections: Network effects on editorial decisions in four computer science journals
Abstract This paper aims to examine the influence of authors’ reputation on editorial bias in scholarly journals. By looking at eight years of editorial decisions in four computer science journals, including 7179 observations on 2913 submissions, we reconstructed author/referee-submission networks. For each submission, we looked at reviewer scores and estimated the reputation of submission authors by means of their network degree. By training a Bayesian network, we estimated the potential effect of scientist reputation on editorial decisions. Results showed that more reputed authors were less likely to be rejected by editors when they submitted papers receiving negative reviews. Although th…
No Tickets for Women in the COVID-19 Race? A Study on Manuscript Submissions and Reviews in 2347 Elsevier Journals during the Pandemic
During the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, the submission rate to scholarly journals increased abnormally. Given that most academics were forced to work from home, the competing demands for familial duties might have penalised the scientific productivity of women. To test this hypothesis, we looked at submitted manuscripts and peer review activities for all Elsevier journals between February and May 2018-2020, including data on over 5 million authors and referees. Results showed that during the first wave of the pandemic, women submitted proportionally fewer manuscripts than men. This deficit was especially pronounced among younger cohorts of women academics. The rate of the peer-rev…