Dear ASPS member,
I just read an interesting item in the Research School of Biology (ANU) newsletter included below about a paper which received sexist reviews. The authors were disappointed in the lack of response to their protest, so they tweeted parts of the review which certainly raised its profile and engagement of the journal.
Professor John Evans
President of ASPS
Sexist peer review causes storm online.
Megan Head has been in the news after she and her colleague Fiona Ingleby received an inappropriate, sexist review of a manuscript they submitted to PLoSONE. (For the record, their study surveyed male-female differences in success at obtaining post-doctoral funding/fellowships.) After an unsatisfactory review process, and having lodged an appeal and giving the journal a reasonable chance to attend to the matter, Drs Head and Ingleby posted portions of the review on Twitter. There was an eruption of online responses and articles in major print media, including the Times Higher Education, Washington Post, and Science. Megan’s experience is a timely reminder of the need to be proactive in countering sexism in science.
