Though the tide may be changing, in science it's still often a man's, man's, man's world, and the glass ceiling is made of ultra-hard, bulletproof, Collector-grade lucite.
But double blind-peer review could be a solution: In 2001, the journal Behavioral Ecology instituted double-blind peer review, and significantly more papers by women were accepted. Other environmental journals tracked over the same period that didn't institute a double-blind peer review system didn't experience an increase in the number of accepted papers by women.
Science blogger Kris Hirst wonders whether instituting double-blind peer review across the board might even the chances when it comes to female scientists reaching management positions, but ultimately she concludes that opening the peer-review process "so that reviewers are forced to sign off on their comments" might achieve the same goal.
What do you think? What are the pluses and minuses to double-blind peer review versus open peer-review? Do you think women's place in the science world is improving, the same, or worse? Or do you not mind female scientists as long as they bake, too?
Have at it, 60 Seconders.
Comments
Job says:
If science supposedly is about objective approximations of truth, and we're already putting up with the hassle of peer-reviewing, wouldn't double-blind peer reviewing be the way to go anyway? Regardless of what effects it has on sexism?
(quoted from Wikipedia)
"Critics of the double-masked process point out that, despite the extra editorial effort to ensure anonymity, the process often fails to do so, since certain approaches, methods, writing styles, notations, etc., may point to a certain group of people in a research stream, and even to a particular person."
This might be true, but just because it doesn't always work doesn't mean we should ignore the benefits of when it does.
January 26, 2008 5:03 AM
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