Who Agrees to Review a Manuscript in Ecology and Evolution? It Depends on Who Asks.

Gender inequality in publishing is a well-documented phenomenon especially for STEM fields. Thus far, however, the focus has been on authorship itself rather than the peer review process. Using reviewer responses from the past 5 years, we asked whether there is a gender bias in accepting to review a manuscript for articles submitted to Ecology and Evolution. Although men were asked twice as much as women to review a manuscript, we found no gender difference in agreeing to review a manuscript. However, we found that the gender of the editor asking does make a difference. To illustrate, men were more likely to agree to review a manuscript when asked by someone they likely perceived as a male editor than a female editor, whereas female reviewers were equally likely to agree regardless of their perception of the editor's gender. We urge further examination of these results to disentangle the specific underlying causes, as well as extensions into other fields and soliciting requests in academia.