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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2023 May 5.
Published in final edited form as: Drug Alcohol Depend. 2022 May 13;236:109493. doi: 10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2022.109493

Gender parity and homophily in the Drug and Alcohol Dependence editorial process

Melissa R Schick a,*, Rachel L Tomko a, Anna M Maralit a,b, Zubair Afzal c, Lindsay M Squeglia a, Agnieszka Freda c, Linda Porrino d, Jennifer Dahne a,e, Erin A McClure a,e, Eric C Strain f
PMCID: PMC10161237  NIHMSID: NIHMS1892323  PMID: 35605531

Abstract

Background:

Despite efforts towards gender parity and some improvement over time, gender bias in peer review remains a pervasive issue. We examined gender representation and homophily in the peer review process for Drug and Alcohol Dependence (DAD).

Methods:

We extracted data for papers submitted to DAD between 2004 and 2019, inclusive. Inferred gender was assigned to handling editors and reviewers using the NamSor gender inference Application Programming Interface (API).

Results:

Men and women handling editors were approximately equally likely to invite women reviewers over time, with only a few exceptions. Over time, 47.1% of editors were women, and 42.6% of review invitations were sent to women. Men were largely consistent over time in their likelihood of accepting a review invitation, while the likelihood of women accepting a review invitation was more variable over time. Gender differences in rates of accepting a review invitation were minimal; however, as women approached half of all invited reviewers in recent years, there has been a greater trend for women, relative to men, to decline review invitations. Evidence of homophily on the part of reviewers accepting invitations was minimal, but in certain years, a tendency to accept review invitations at higher rates from editors of the same gender was observed.

Discussion:

Given the benefits of diversity in scientific advancement, these results underline the importance of continuing efforts to increase gender diversity among editors and in reviewer pools, and the need for reviewers to be mindful of their own reviewing practices.

Keywords: Substance use, Peer review, Gender bias, Equity, Women in science

1. Introduction

Peer review is the gold standard for the rigorous evaluation of scientific research by experts in the field. The peer review process is intended to ensure the quality of academic literature, guide clinical practice and recommendations, and ensure the future direction of research is based upon methodologically rigorous and ethical work (Kelly et al., 2014; Sowards, 2013). Despite efforts toward gender parity and evidence of some improvement over time, gender bias in the peer review process remains a pervasive issue in science (Ceci and Williams, 2011; Larivière et al., 2013; Witteman et al., 2019) and in the peer review process in particular (e.g., Amrein et al., 2011; Fox et al., 2016; Fox et al., 2019; Helmer et al., 2017). There have been multiple calls in the last decade to explore the roots of this bias and increase the representation of women as editors and reviewers for academic journals (Chawla, 2018; Conley and Stadmark, 2012; Larivière et al., 2013).

While numerous studies have focused on gender bias with respect to authorship of manuscripts (e.g., Hart et al., 2019; Marrone et al., 2020; Pinho-Gomes et al., 2020), a focus on bias in the peer review process is imperative given its influence on what and who are published. As ‘gatekeepers of science’, it is imperative not only that editors and reviewers remain impartial, but that they are also representative of the diversity of the scientific community represented by that journal (Crane, 1967; De Grazia, 1963). A study of nearly 24,000 submissions to the journal e-Life found that women were underrepresented as peer reviewers (21.6% of reviewers and editors were women; Murray et al., 2018). These results are consistent with other studies from academic disciplines including medicine (Amrein et al., 2011; Gilbert et al., 1994; Heckenberg and Druml, 2010; Jagsi et al., 2008; Keiser et al., 2003; Kennedy et al., 2001; Kibbe and Freischlag, 2020), life sciences (Buckley et al., 2014; Fox et al., 2016; Handley et al., 2015), social sciences (Helmer et al., 2017), mathematics (Topaz and Sen, 2016), and earth sciences (Lerback and Hanson, 2017).

An explanation for these gender disparities in the review process is not clear. It is possible that these disparities reflect implicit, unconscious biases. Sexism also has been identified as contributing to issues such as women’s under-representation in senior positions in academia (Savigny, 2014), which in turn may be related to factors such as of unequal access to resources and a negative workplace climate (Settles et al., 2013). Gender bias has also been noted in the peer review process in previous work; for example, abstracts authored by women tend to be judged as having lesser scientific quality, particularly if they fell in the realm of “male-typed” topics (e.g., physics; Knobloch-Westerwick et al., 2013). Assumptions based on the inferred gender of a name may interact with sexism to subtly or explicitly bias the review process. Multiple other suggestions have been offered for external factors that may affect women serving as editors/reviewers such as disparities in funding, differences in career length, and family factors (Burns et al., 2019; Ceci and Williams, 2011; Ginther and Kahn, 2009; Lynn et al., 2018; Sá et al., 2020). With multiple potential mechanisms for gender bias in peer review, it is hard to disentangle the exact magnitude of contributions of one specific factor.

Analyzing academic review processes through the lens of homophilic networks may provide a broader platform to understand the overarching effects of these various factors and allows us to examine bias in the peer review process itself. Homophily refers to the “principle that a contact between similar people occurs at a higher rate than among dissimilar people” (McPherson et al., 2001, p. 416). A review of editors and reviewers from the Frontiers journals found that editors display same-gender preferences when appointing reviewers, and that these homophilic tendencies persisted across disciplines with more equal gender representation (Helmer et al., 2017). Similarly, other work found that reviewers displayed significant gender homophily with a first author in recommending acceptance of manuscripts for publication (Murray et al., 2018). Taken together with the knowledge that men are more likely to hold senior editorial positions (Amrein et al., 2011; Helmer et al., 2017; Topaz and Sen, 2016), gender homophily could put women scientists at a disadvantage in the peer review process.

While the field of substance use-focused science has experienced a great deal of growth in scholarly activity (reflected by a 350% increase in substance use-related publications from 2000 to 2009 alone; Helinski and Spanagel, 2011), the question of gender bias in the peer review process for substance use-focused science has been not been studied extensively. A review of substance use journals found that only 39% of editorial board members were identified as women across 41 journals. Furthermore, four times more men were editors-in-chief compared to women (80% were identified as men versus 20% as women; Matilda et al., 2020). Yet, it remains unclear the extent to which gender parity and homophily exist in the peer review process for journals dedicated to substance use research. In this study, we examine the peer review process for the journal, Drug and Alcohol Dependence (DAD), applying gender-recognition tools to archival data (de Kleijn et al., 2020). DAD is an international journal focusing on the publication of research related to drug, alcohol, and tobacco use and dependence (aka substance use disorders), and as of 2021 it was the third highest rated journal focusing on substance use based on impact factor (Drug and Alcohol Dependence). We evaluate three questions related to gender representation and homophily in the peer review process for DAD:

  1. Do men and women handling editors invite men and women to serve as reviewers at similar rates?

  2. Are there gender differences in rates of accepting invitations to review?

  3. Do reviewers accept invitations at different rates depending on the gender of the handling editor?

Of note, because of the limitations with the gender recognition tools being used for analyses which treat gender as a binary construct that is inferred from name, the terms men and women as used throughout the manuscript do not reflect the true gender identity of editors and reviewers. We recognize that gender is not a binary construct and that these analyses likely do not reflect the bias experienced by handling editors and reviewers whose gender identity is not reflected by the present binary approach.

2. Materials and methods

2.1. Data set

We extracted data from manuscript management systems for all papers that were submitted to DAD between January 1, 2004 and December 31, 2019, inclusive. Over this time period, the journal received 11,108 paper submissions. We excluded papers that were not sent out to at least one reviewer (10,783 papers were sent out for peer review in this time frame, corresponding to 77,601 review invitations).

The journal uses a system consisting of an Editor in Chief (EIC) and a group of Associate Editors (AEs) to manage submissions. The AE role was instituted in June/July of 2005, and the number of AEs has steadily climbed from a group of five to nine as of December 2019 (plus the EIC). The AEs plus the EIC will be referred to as the “handling editors” in this paper.

We excluded papers handled by editors who served less than three years to exclude those whose editing experience was relatively short lived and who handled only a small number of manuscript submissions (i.e., restrict the sample to regular journal editors; n = 1549 review invitations excluded). Manuscript submissions handled by this group (e.g., guest editors) may not have been representative of the editorial practices because these individuals were not as socialized to the journal’s practices and policies. The data set includes an observation for each reviewer invitation that was sent out. Each observation includes the inferred gender (see below) of the handling editor and reviewer (each coded such that 0 = woman, 1 = man), and the outcome of the review invitation (coded such that 0 = declined, 1 = accepted). As shown in Fig. 1, review invitations sometimes were withdrawn before the potential reviewer could respond, received no response, or were not acted upon (i.e., a review was not completed). These cases were not included, as it could not be determined which of these scenarios were reflected in each case (remaining n = 53,661).

Fig. 1.

Fig. 1.

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CONSORT Diagram. *Note. Uninvited refers to cases in which review invitations were withdrawn before: the potential reviewer could respond, the handling editor received a response, or the review was not completed.

2.2. Inferring gender

An inferred gender was assigned to handling editors and reviewers using the NamSor gender inference Application Programming Interface (API). NamSor provides a Gender Probability Score for being classified as a man or woman (i.e., the natural log of the ratio of probabilities, determined by a Naïve-Bayes model, of each name receiving the classification of man or woman) based on first name, last name, and country of origin (when available). Names with a classification probability less than 0.85 were coded as unknown (de Kleijn et al., 2020). Though this approach likely results in a portion of inferred genders that are misaligned with individuals’ gender identity, gender bias in the peer review process may occur due to assumptions about individuals’ gender based on their names.

2.3. Statistical analyses

We used descriptive statistics and frequencies in IBM SPSS version 27 to characterize the dataset and examine proportions of handling editors and reviewers inferred to be women and men across time. For each of our three questions, analyses were conducted using generalized linear mixed models with a logit link function in SAS PROC GLIMMIX to account for the dichotomous nature of each outcome variable. To test the first question, handling editor gender, submission year, and their interaction were sequentially entered into a model predicting likelihood of inviting a woman to review. To test the second question, reviewer gender, submission year, and their interaction were sequentially entered into a model predicting likelihood of reviewers accepting the invitation to review. To test the third question, handling editor gender, reviewer gender, submission year, their three-way interaction, and all two-way interactions were entered into a model predicting likelihood of reviewers accepting the invitation to review. Non-significant interactions were removed from the model in cases where removing the interaction term improved model fit (i.e., −2Log Pseudo Likelihood). We followed up on significant interactions of interest by plotting and examining differences in marginal means.

3. Results

3.1. Reviewer and editor gender

From 2004–2019, there were 17 (out of 18) handling editors whose gender was able to be inferred by NamSor. Of these, eight were identified as women and nine were identified as men. A small number of article submissions were managed by a handling editor whose gender could not be determined by the gender recognition algorithm. The present data set includes a total of 53,661 review invitations that were either accepted or declined, sent out by handling editors whose gender was able to be inferred, and which were sent to reviewers whose gender was able to be inferred (out of the total 77,601 review invitations sent out). Approximately equal numbers of these invitations were sent by handling editors who were inferred to be women (n = 27,203, 50.7%) and men (n = 26,458, 49.3%).

Of the 53,661 review invitations included in the present study, 57.4% (n = 30,793) of review invitations were sent to reviewers identified as men and 42.6% (n = 22,868) were sent to reviewers identified as women. Of the total review invitations sent out, 3.2% (n = 2465) were sent to reviewers whose gender could not be identified. Within each article, approximately five reviewers were invited (M = 5.36, SD = 3.20, Range: 1 – 53), and, on average, 40.5% (SD = 29.1) of invited reviewers were women. Nearly one fifth of articles (19.2%, n = 2064) had no women invited to review, while 7.4% (n = 796) of articles had no men invited to review. The proportion of handling editors and reviewers inferred to be women over time are depicted in Fig. 2.

Fig. 2.

Fig. 2.

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Proportion of manuscripts handled by women editors and reviewed by women reviewers by year. Note. Drug and Alcohol Dependence instituted Associate Editors (AEs) in mid-2005. In 2004 there were only two editors (the Editor in Chief and a Co-Editor); both were inferred to be men.

Question 1. Do men and women handling editors invite men and women to serve as reviewers at similar rates?.1

The interaction between handling editor gender and submission year was significant in predicting likelihood of inviting a woman to serve as a reviewer χ142=31.66, p < .05). Further examination of this interaction revealed that men and women handling editors were approximately equally likely to invite women to serve as reviewers over time (see Fig. 3), with a few exceptions. Women handling editors were significantly more likely to invite a woman to serve as a reviewer in 2007 compared to handling editors who were men (OR = 0.71, p < .05, 95% CI [0.56, 0.90]). Time trends revealed that women handling editors were largely consistent over time in their likelihood of inviting a woman to serve as a reviewer – the only exception was a significant decrease in likelihood from 2007 to 2008 (OR = 1.55, p < .05, 95%CI [1.24, 1.94]). The likelihood of a man handling editor inviting a woman to review significantly increased from 2008 to 2009 (OR = 0.83, p < .05, 95%CI [0.70, 0.99]), from 2011 to 2012 (OR = 0.85, p < .05, 95%CI [0.74, 0.98]), and from 2016 to 2017 (OR = 0.89, p < .05, 95%CI [0.80, 0.99]).

Fig. 3.

Fig. 3.

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Likelihood of inviting a woman to review by handling editor gender. Note. Asterisks denote statistically significant differences: * *p < .01.

Question 2. Are there gender differences in rates of accepting invitations to review?

The interaction of reviewer gender and submission year was significant in predicting likelihood of accepting the review invitation (χ152=35.02, p < .05). Further examination of this interaction revealed that men and women largely accepted review invitations at approximately similar rates over time (see Fig. 4), with a few exceptions. Men were significantly less likely to accept a review invitation compared to women in 2009 (OR = 0.75, p < .05, 95%CI [0.61, 0.92]), but were significantly more likely to accept a review invitation relative to women in 2017 (OR = 1.13, p < .05, 95%CI [1.01, 1.25]), 2018 (OR = 1.14, p < .05, 95%CI [1.02, 1.26]), and 2019 (OR = 1.20, p < .05, 95%CI [1.07, 1.35]).

Fig. 4.

Fig. 4.

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Likelihood of agreeing to review by reviewer gender. Note. Asterisks denote statistically significant differences: *p < .05, * *p < .01.

Time trends revealed that men reviewers were largely consistent over time in their likelihood of accepting review invitations2 – the only exceptions were a significant decrease in likelihood from 2006 to 2007 (OR = 1.32, p < .05, 95%CI [1.04, 1.67]), from 2014 to 2015 (OR = 1.13, p < .05, 95% CI [1.01, 1.25]) and from 2017 to 2018 (OR = 1.22, p < .05, 95% CI [1.10, 1.34]). The likelihood of women accepting review invitations was more variable over time. Likelihood of women accepting a review invitation significantly decreased from 2006 to 2007 (OR = 1.29, p < .05, 95%CI [1.06, 1.56]), significantly increased from 2008 to 2009 (OR = 0.73, p < .05, 95%CI [0.59, 0.91]), significantly decreased from 2009 to 2010 (OR = 1.29, p < .05, 95% CI [1.05, 1.58]), from 2011 to 2012 (OR = 1.21, p < .05, 95%CI [1.04, 1.41]), from 2016 to 2017 (OR = 1.18, p < .05, 95%CI [1.05, 1.33]), and from 2017 to 2018 (OR = 1.23, p < .05, 95%CI [1.10, 1.38]).

Question 3. :Do reviewers accept invitations at different rates depending on the gender of the handling editor?.3

The three-way interaction (handling editor gender by reviewer gender by submission year) predicting likelihood of a reviewer accepting the review invitation was significant (χ142=41.37, p < .05); this is depicted visually in Fig. 5. Reviewers who were men were significantly more likely to accept invitations from men (versus women) handling editors in 2019 (OR = 1.29, p < .05, 95%CI [1.07, 1.55]), but were significantly less likely to accept invitations from men (versus women) handling editors in 2007 (OR = 0.65, p < .05, 95%CI [0.46, 0.92]).

Fig. 5.

Fig. 5.

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Handling editor gender by reviewer gender by submission year interaction predicting likelihood of accepting an invitation to review. Note. Asterisks denote statistically significant differences: *p < .05, * *p < .01.

Reviewers who were women were significantly more likely to accept invitations from women (versus men) handling editors in 2006 (OR = 0.60, p < .05, 95%CI [0.39, 0.92]), 2007 (OR = 0.54, p < .05, 95%CI [0.37, 0.79]), 2010 (OR = 0.72, p < .05, 95%CI [0.53, 0.96]), 2011 (OR = 0.67, p < .05, 95%CI [0.53, 0.86]), and 2014 (OR = 0.76, p < .05, 95%CI [0.62, 0.94]), but were significantly more likely to accept invitations from men (versus women) handling editors in 2015 (OR = 1.26, p < .05, 95%CI [1.03, 1.55]).

4. Discussion

The goal of this study was to examine the relationship between handling editor gender and reviewer gender over time for the journal DAD to analyze the degree to which homophily might drive the journal’s use of reviewers and reviewer’s likelihood of accepting review invitations. First, we did not find evidence of homophily on the part of the journal editors. While there were years that may have run counter to this (e.g., Fig. 3, 2007), these seem likely aberrations in otherwise consistent patterns over the years. The proportion of women serving as handling editors has increased substantially over time peaking at 70% of handling editors being women (Fig. 2); overall, 47% of the handling editors from this time period were women. However, while the proportion of invited women reviewers has somewhat increased over time, it has remained below 50%. Opportunities to participate in the peer review process provide experience, networking, and may influence academic promotion and leadership opportunities and nomination within the field (e.g., positions on editorial boards; Ferris and Brumback, 2010; Lerback and Hanson, 2017; van Loon, 2003). Thus, while our results suggest improvements over time in gender representation, it is important that future efforts continue to focus on diversifying reviewer pools.

Next, we found that the likelihood of accepting review invitations has declined substantially over time from approximately 70–75% to 50–55% (Fig. 4). One explanation for this overall finding may be the proliferation of academic journals (Goel and Faria, 2007; Ware and Mabe, 2015) and in substance use-related research and publishing in recent years (Helinski and Spanagel, 2011). With a larger number of journals accepting submissions, there is a greater need for reviewer services, likely resulting in individuals receiving an increasing number of review requests over time. Our results suggest that gender differences in accepting review invitations have been minimal; however, as women have approached half of all invited reviewers in recent years, there has been a greater trend for women, relative to men, to decline review invitations (e.g., in 2009 women were more likely than men to accept review invitations, but this trend reversed such that in 2017, women were less likely than men to accept review invitations). This finding is consistent with examination of gender representation in the peer review process in other fields (e.g., Williams et al., 2018) and might represent the heightened competing demands experienced by women. Even after controlling for rank, field, and department, women in academia carry a larger service load than do men (Guarino and Borden, 2017; Hanasono et al., 2019; Schneider and Radhakrishnan, 2018), and women report having greater responsibilities at home compared to men (Fothergill and Feltey, 2003; Jenkins, 2020; Lynn et al., 2018; Schiebinger and Gilmartin, 2010). Additionally, women are particularly underrepresented in higher ranks of academic positions (Goulden et al., 2011). As there are less women in these positions, they likely receive more requests for service, leading to a need to decline. It is worth noting that, while we were not able to assess the effect of race or ethnicity in the current study, this disproportionate service burden is exponentially experienced by academics of color, speaking to the need for initiatives to support the career development of women and scientists from underrepresented backgrounds (Lee and Won, 2014; Li and Koedel, 2017).

Third, evidence of homophily on the part of reviewers accepting invitations was minimal, but in certain years, a tendency to accept review invitations at higher rates from editors of the same gender was observed (e.g., men were more likely to accept review invitations from men in 2019, and women were more likely to accept review invitations from women in 2006, 2007, 2010, 2011, and 2014). This finding may reflect overall trends regarding gender homophily (e.g., Murray et al., 2018), and suggests that the peer review process for DAD may be at least somewhat influenced by gender bias on the part of reviewers. The consequences of homophily in the editorial process are worthy of further exploration, but existing data suggest that gender diversity broadens scientific viewpoints (Nielsen et al., 2017) and publications from gender-diverse authorship teams are more highly-cited (Campbell et al., 2013).

4.1. Recommendations

These results have important implications for research practice with respect to the peer review process and suggest additional research in this area. First, handling editors should be aware of balancing the gender representation of the reviewers they invite to review and be supported in the identification of diverse qualified reviewers for these opportunities. For instance, editorial management software could be leveraged to alert editors to potential homophily by displaying statistics regarding the demographic breakdown of reviewers they have invited (Helmer et al., 2017). Many journals do not capture demographic information of editors, authors, and reviewers, which would be an important step to ensuring representation across the publishing continuum. Future research would also benefit from including additional handling editor and reviewer characteristics (e.g., race/ethnicity), collecting more thorough information regarding sex/gender (e.g., allowing for identification as non-binary sex and gender identities) as well as author characteristics to examine bias more fully in the peer review process. While the DAD editorial team did not show evidence of homophily in their review invitations, it is important for those leading these teams to ensure that trends continue towards parity and equity. Towards this goal, incoming editors could be trained to prevent homophilic practices from emerging. Further, given our finding of some homophily on the part of reviewers, review requests could be blinded to handling editor; such practices have been enacted in other journals and may help to reduce bias. Towards reducing the apparent imbalance in the proportions of women serving as editors and as reviewers, authors should consider their own practices in recommending reviewers for article submissions, and reviewers who decline to review invitations should consider recommending junior colleagues from underrepresented backgrounds to broaden the reviewer pool. Finally, we recommend that other substance use-focused journals pursue similar analyses to understand whether trends observed here are specific to DAD or generalize to the field broadly.

4.2. Limitations

The present study is not without limitations. First, some observations had to be excluded due to the inability of NamSor to infer gender and the inferred gender may have been incorrect, which may have led to classification errors. However, we believe this also represents a notable strength, as reviewers and handling editors may make inferences about gender based on name, which may contribute to bias. Relatedly, NamSor technology treated gender as a binary construct, despite the knowledge that gender falls along a continuum. Future work is needed to understand the extent to which gender minority individuals experience bias in the peer review process. Second, we were unable to consider author gender in the present analyses, despite evidence suggesting that author gender may also factor into handling editor and reviewer’s decision making (Budden et al., 2008; Conley and Stadmark, 2012). Third, it would have been useful to consider other demographics, such as race, ethnicity, and country, as potential drivers in the review invitation and acceptance process. Unfortunately, the dataset was limited and does not contain other demographic information. Fourth, we considered only explicit rejections (i.e., cases in which the reviewer indicated that they were unable or unwilling to complete the review). In some cases, the invitation was classified as “Uninvited,” but it is unclear in these cases whether the review timed out (i.e., because the reviewer “passively rejected” the invitation) or the editor withdrew the application for some other reason (e.g., because invitations were sent to a greater number of reviewers than were needed, an email address returned as undeliverable). The ability to include these “passive rejections” may have affected our pattern of findings, especially because unique patterns may have emerged based on the gender composition of this group. Fifth, we do not have data on the timeliness or quality of reviews submitted. It may be that there are important gender-based differences in not only who is accepting invitations to review, but their subsequent behaviors as reviewers. Future research is needed to further explore gender differences in reviewer behavior beyond simply accepting (versus declining) review invitations. Finally, it is important to note that data used in the present study represent submissions prior to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. Emerging evidence suggests that gender disparities have been amplified during the pandemic (National Academies of Sciences, 2021); thus, work is needed to examine how long-lasting these effects will be.

5. Conclusions

The present study capitalized upon a large, multi-year dataset to examine gender representation and homophily in the peer review process for DAD. Our results suggest that gender representation in the reviewer pool has improved over time, though there is still work to be done in this area. It is important to note that, even when greater diversity is achieved in editor groups and in reviewer pools, there is the potential for gender bias to appear in the publishing process. Our results suggest that homophily may still emerge on the part of reviewers. Thus, it is imperative that all those involved in the peer review process (i.e., handling editors, reviewers, and authors) maintain awareness of the ways in which their own practices may be contributing to gender bias.

Role of Funding Source

Funding for work on this manuscript by the 8th author (JD) was provided by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (K23DA045766). NIDA had no role in the study design, collection, analysis or interpretation of the data, writing the manuscript, or the decision to submit the paper for publication.

Footnotes

1

For these analyses, men were the reference group for editor gender and 2004 was the reference group for submission year. Thus, when the handling editor is a woman, odds ratios greater than 1 reflect increased odds of inviting a woman (versus a man) to review, and odds ratios less than 1 reflect decreased odds of inviting a woman (versus a man) to review. The opposite is true when the handling editor is a man.

2

For these analyses, men were the reference group for reviewer gender and 2004 was the reference group for submission year. Thus, when the reviewer is a woman, odds ratios greater than 1 reflect increased odds of accepting (versus declining) a review invitation, and odds ratios less than 1 reflect decreased odds of accepting (versus declining) a review invitation. The opposite is true when the reviewer is a man.

3

For these analyses, men were the reference group for handling editor and reviewer gender and 2004 was the reference group for submission year.

Conflict of Interest

Author Strain was the Editor in Chief of Drug and Alcohol Dependence at the time that this manuscript was conceptualized and during the time period represented by data used in the present study and has consulted, done work for, or served on advisory boards to the following organizations: Caron, Cerevel, Elsevier, Masimo/Innovative Health Solutions, The Oak Group, Otsuka, Pear Therapeutics, and UpToDate. Authors Afzal and Freda are employees of Elsevier BV, the publisher of Drug and Alcohol Dependence. Author Porrino served as an Associate Editor of Drug and Alcohol Dependence during the time period represented by data used in the present study. Author Tomko has provided consultation to the American Society of Addiction Medicine.

CRediT authorship contribution statement

This manuscript was initially conceptualized through conversations between authors Tomko, Squeglia, Dahne, McClure, and Strain. Authors Authors Schick, Tomko, Squeglia, and Strain guided the selection of study variables and analyses. Authors Afzal, Freda and Strain were responsible for the acquisition of the data used in the present study. Authors Schick, Tomko, and Afzal were primarily responsible for the analysis and interpretation of data, with author Porrino contributing to the interpretation of the data in early conversations and all authors contributed to interpretation of the data through critical reviews of manuscript drafts. In particular, author Afzal was critical to the analysis and interpretation of data with respect to the complexity of using the NamSor API and generating the inferred gender for use in subsequent analyses. Authors Maralit and Schick wrote the first draft of the manuscript, and authors Tomko, Maralit, Afzal, Squeglia, Freda, Porrino, Dahne, McClure, and Strain reviewed the manuscript for intellectual content. All authors reviewed and approved the final manuscript before submission, and agree to be accountable for all aspects of this work.

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