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International Journal of Epidemiology peer reviewers: global and gender distribution

Masukume, G.; Gonzalez-Alvarez, J.; Grech, V.

2020-05-19 epidemiology
10.1101/2020.05.14.20101964 medRxiv
Show abstract

The science of epidemiology studies and analyses the patterns, distributions and determinants of health-related entities. Peer review is crucial to the biomedical journal ecosystem. Furthermore, gender inequality persists in science and improving gender representation is a key international goal. For these reasons, we evaluated the geographical location and gender distribution of the International Journal of Epidemiology peer reviewers for 2018. There were 695 peer reviewers hailing from 41 countries. 77% (533) of the reviewers were from 20% (8) of these countries, a classical 80:20 Pareto distrubution. 41% (282) of peer reviewers were female. Although in line with the general underrepresentation of females reported in the literature, this proportion was much closer to parity than in other fields. Our investigation of peer reviewer epidemiology demonstrates geographical and gender inequalities that can be further improved since diversity promotes innovation and a greater possibility for solving complex problems.

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