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2025/01/16

Distinguished Professor Yu Ting Liu, Department of Soil and Environmental Sciences, National Chung Hsing University

This study analyzes biomedical and life science articles indexed in PubMed and estimates the number of days from manuscript submission to acceptance. The results suggest that, across most biomedical journals, papers with women as first authors or corresponding authors tend to have longer review cycles than those authored by men, and manuscripts with authors based in low-income countries also tend to take longer than those from other countries. Such differences may have implications for career development and cumulative productivity.

Several factors may contribute to these patterns. Women scientists often face additional external burdens (e.g., household and childcare responsibilities), which can make it more difficult to attain senior or leading positions and to access flexible research resources. Lower average seniority or constrained resources may lead to more extensive revision requests and slower mobilization when additional experiments or analyses are required. For national differences, non-native English speakers may face higher costs in academic writing and in responding to reviewers; researchers in low-income settings may incur greater time and financial barriers to generating additional data or conducting further analyses; and reviewers may be less familiar with local research communities, potentially leading to more cautious and prolonged review processes.

Important limitations should be noted. Inferring gender from names may involve misclassification and cultural bias, and the analysis does not account for key factors such as authors’ seniority/age/rank, editors’ gender, whether journals use double-blind review, or whether authors are on parental leave. More importantly, overall submission-to-acceptance time cannot distinguish whether delays arise from editorial handling, reviewer turnaround, or author revision time; therefore, the findings cannot be used to directly infer “reviewer or editor discrimination.” Longer review time should also not be equated with higher quality; it may reflect additional revisions, but it may also indicate unnecessary or unequal demands that slow dissemination, affecting career-level efficiency more than any single paper’s quality.

Nevertheless, women scientists and researchers in low-income countries may be disadvantaged in international visibility and access to flexible resources, which could expose them to more stringent requests while limiting their ability to respond quickly. Beyond journal-level reforms (e.g., double-blind review and publicly reported process indicators), universities and research institutions could provide more concrete support to reduce structural workload disparities and improve women researchers’ scientific performance.

yliu@nchu.edu.tw

2025/01/16

Associate Investigator and Attending Physician Chia-Yu Chi, National Institute of Infectious Diseases and Vaccinology, National Health Research Institutes

In biomedical research, one of the hardest parts after submission is waiting—waiting for an editor’s decision, reviewers’ comments, and (hopefully) an acceptance email. But is that waiting time the same for everyone?

A study published in PLOS Biology analyzed millions of PubMed-indexed papers with traceable submission and acceptance dates. It reports that manuscripts whose first or corresponding authors were inferred to be women based on their names tended to spend longer in the overall submission-to-acceptance process.. A similar pattern appeared for authors in lower-income settings (by GDP per capita), whose papers also tended to take longer to reach acceptance. For any single article, the gap may seem modest—roughly a few extra days to about one or two weeks. Over a career, however, small delays can accumulate into a substantial “time cost.” The study estimates that across 50 papers, women authors may spend an additional 350 to 750 days waiting for review, editorial decisions, or the completion of revisions compared with male peers.

Scientific progress depends on diverse perspectives and lived experiences. If certain groups face delays more often in the publication pipeline, their findings may take longer to become visible—and, in turn, influence when evidence enters media coverage, clinical guidance, and public discussion. Over time, persistent delays could also affect promotion, access to resources, and visibility, and may narrow the range of questions, methods, populations, and clinical priorities represented in the biomedical literature.

The study makes these potential “institutional delays” visible at scale, reminding us that inequality in science may arise not only in laboratories, but also in the publication process. The authors suggest that double-blind peer review may help reduce disparities—at least early in the process—by masking author and institutional identities and limiting stereotypes linked to names or prestige.

Important limitations remain. The study defines “time under review” as the total days from submission to acceptance, even though  the process includes multiple stages (editorial handling, reviewer recruitment, reviewer response time, author revision, and repeated rounds). Because stage-by-stage timestamps are usually not public, the analysis cannot identify where delays occur; the findings therefore cannot be simplified as proof of editor/reviewer bias, or as evidence that women authors inherently revise more slowly. Gender was inferred using Genderize.io, which is imperfect and can misclassify names. Finally, because the the dataset is limited to PubMed (biomedicine and life sciences), the patterns may not generalize to other fields such as mathematics, engineering, or the humanities and social sciences.

pedchi@nhri.edu.tw

2025/01/16

Associate Professor I-Chun Pan, Horticulture Department, National Chung Hsing University

This article draws on the PubMed database, primarily covering the life sciences and biomedical fields, and compiles publications from 1781 to 2024 to examine differences in review duration (from submission to acceptance) when male and female serve as first authors or corresponding authors. The results show that papers authored by female take approximately 7.4%–12.7% longer to be accepted than those authored by male, regardless of whether female are first or corresponding authors. In addition, manuscripts from authors in low-income countries experience substantially longer review times, increasing by about 25.8%–44.3%. These disparities are widely observed across most biomedical journals and subject categories. 

Because the study uses “submission-to-acceptance” as the overall indicator of review duration, it cannot distinguish whether the prolonged timeline is mainly driven by delays on the journal side (e.g., editorial handling and peer review) or on the author side (e.g., time spent preparing revisions). Nevertheless, the findings indicate that this is not an isolated phenomenon confined to a small number of journals or disciplines, but rather a systemic structural disparity. This suggests that female scientists and authors from low-income countries may face longer waiting times during peer review, resulting in cumulative disadvantages.

The study also suggests that female authors may be more frequently required to conduct additional experiments or may face stricter scrutiny of their scientific argumentation and writing. Meanwhile, authors from low-income and non-English-speaking countries may be constrained by limited research resources, inadequate infrastructure, and the added costs of language editing, all of which can prolong the review process. However, review duration itself is not equivalent to paper quality and should not be used to infer differences in scientific value. In today’s academic environment, publication output is often a primary benchmark for evaluation, and delays in peer review can affect career competitiveness and academic achievement, including promotion, hiring, and grant applications. Ultimately, the value of academic research should be judged by its innovation, forward-looking contribution, and practical impact. Gender, economic status, and language background should not determine scientific merit; therefore, the academic community should improve peer-review practices to reduce these potential hidden barriers, enhance efficiency and fairness, and promote greater equity in academia.

icp@dragon.nchu.edu.tw

2025/01/16

Professor Yun-Hsuan Chang, Institute of Gerontology, National Cheng Kung University College of Medicine

This study analyzed more than 36.5 million biomedical and life science articles and found that papers by female researchers spend longer in peer review than those by male researchers. As the largest study on this topic to date, it indicates that review delays are not isolated to specific disciplines but represent a systemic pattern across biomedicine.

For researchers, publication speed is closely tied to promotion, funding, and academic impact. When small delays accumulate over a career, female corresponding authors may spend 350–750 more days waiting for review outcomes than male corresponding authors, potentially widening the gender gap in academia.

Gender was inferred from authors’ first names, which may misclassify gender-neutral or non-binary individuals. PubMed data records only submission-to-acceptance time, so the source of delay—slow reviewers, difficulty finding reviewers, or longer author revisions—cannot be distinguished. The study also examined only accepted papers and did not track manuscripts rejected because of bias or after multiple rounds of revision.

Editors or reviewers may hold stereotypes about female authors or be less familiar with topics where women are more represented, leading to stricter evaluation—so-called implicit bias. Women also tend to carry greater childcare, household, and administrative duties, which may lengthen revision time. The authors further suggest that higher levels of perfectionism or risk aversion among women may contribute to longer responses. Review times were also longer for authors from low-income countries, possibly due to limited resources, language barriers, or regional bias.

The time gap was unrelated to readability, article length, or number of authors. Evidence from fields such as economics shows that papers by women often achieve higher impact after major revisions, implying that reviewers may apply higher thresholds to female-authored work. This does not mean lower quality; rather, women may need to meet stricter standards to gain equal recognition.

Double-blind review, which conceals the author's identity, may limit gender or nationality bias. Journals could also monitor and publish gender-related review statistics and provide implicit-bias training for reviewers. Academic institutions should recognize women’s additional social burdens, such as childcare, and offer more flexible support to lessen their impact on research progress.

yh.chang.snoopy@gmail.com

2025/01/18

Director／Professor Hsien-Ho Lin, Institute of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine, National Taiwan University

Associate Professor Chen-I Kuan, Institute of Health Behaviors and Community Sciences, National Taiwan University

This study examines whether gender is associated with peer-review duration in biomedical publishing. It reports that manuscripts authored by women take significantly longer to pass through review. Papers from low-income countries also face longer review times, suggesting that women researchers in low-income settings may experience compounded disadvantages linked to both gender and resource constraints.

These gaps may look like a “technical” feature of the publication process, but they can accumulate into career and knowledge-production effects. When certain groups’ work is accepted and published later, their findings may gain visibility and citations more slowly and may be disadvantaged in competitive evaluations for promotion, grants, and international collaboration. In this sense, review delays can function as an invisible barrier to building measurable outputs and reputational capital.

The pattern also reflects broader organizational structures. Prior research suggests women in biomedicine are less likely to enter influential decision-making and professional networks and less likely to advance into leadership roles. Such barriers can limit opportunities and voice, and may feed back into publication trajectories and impact, creating a subtle but persistent cycle. Underrepresentation in leadership may also weaken gender sensitivity in health policy and practice. During COVID-19, for example, constraints on schooling, childcare, and long-term care intensified women’s work–care burdens, emotional strain, and risks of domestic violence—issues that institutions may not have identified quickly enough to respond with adequate support.

A key contribution of this study is that it uses review time as a measurable indicator to strengthen empirical discussion of harder-to-observe processes such as network exclusion and promotion barriers. Improving fairness in biomedical knowledge production may therefore require not only greater transparency and reform in peer review, but also structural efforts to expand women’s access to decision-making networks and senior leadership.

The study has limitations. Although it finds an association between women authorship and longer review time, it cannot disentangle whether manuscripts require more revision on average or whether women face higher standards at comparable quality; causal claims about gender bias remain indirect. The authors also do not test how regional variation might affect gender identification (e.g., East Asian names may be harder for foreign editors or reviewers to gender). Despite these constraints, the study raises important questions, while explanations of the underlying mechanisms require further evidence.

Professor Hsien-Ho Lin hsienho@gmail.com

Associate Professor Chen-I Kuan chenikuan@ntu.edu.tw

• 한국과학기술미디어센터 초대 이사장에 노정혜 서울대 교수(조선일보)
• 한국과학기술미디어센터장에 이근영 사회평론아카데미 기획위원(연합뉴스)
• 언론-과학자 잇는 ‘가교’ 되겠다…한국과학기술미디어센터 개소(매일경제)
• 대형 산불 때 정치인 찾아가던 기자들이 달라졌다… 과학기술미디어센터, 과학 보도를 바꿔놓다(한국일보)

• 과학자, 연구자에게는 의견과 해설이 온전한 맥락과 함께 제공되는 안전한 발언 공간이 돼줍니다. 선의를 위해 한 논평이 기사화 과정에서 왜곡되거나 부정확하게 변질될 우려를 줄이는 완충 작용을 합니다. 
• 기관 홍보 담당자에게는 기관의 성과를 기자들에게 보다 객관적이고 정교하게 알리고, SMC 글로벌 네트워크를 통해 영향력을 높일 기회를 제공합니다. 
• 기자에게는 사안을 해석하는 데 도움이 될 치우침 없는 종합적인 정보를 빠르고 풍성하게 제공하고, 이를 통해 기사에서 과학과 기술을 보다 자유롭고 편리하게 활용하도록 돕습니다.