Gender representation in science publication: evidence from Brain Communications

The persistent underrepresentation of women in Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics and Medicine (STEMM) points to the need to continue promoting the awareness and understanding of this phenomenon. Being one of the main outputs of scientific work, academic publications provide the opportunity to quantify the gender gap in science as well as to identify possible sources of bias and areas of improvement. Brain Communications is a 'young' journal founded in 2019, committed to transparent publication of rigorous work in neuroscience, neurology and psychiatry. For all manuscripts (n = 796) received by the journal between 2019 and 2021, we analysed the gender of all authors (n = 7721) and reviewers (n = 4492). Overall, women were 35.3% of all authors and 31.3% of invited reviewers. A considerably higher proportion of women was found in first authorship (42.4%) than in last authorship positions (24.9%). The representation of women authors and reviewers decreased further in the months following COVID-19 restrictions, suggesting a possible exacerbating role of the pandemic on existing disparities in science publication. The proportion of manuscripts accepted for publication was not significantly different according to the gender of the first, middle or last authors, meaning we found no evidence of gender bias within the review or editorial decision-making processes at Brain Communications.