Women have made gradual inroads into scientific careers. In Spain, they represent 39.6% of research personnel. However, their increased presence does not translate into equal conditions, and the differences that still persist also extend to scientific communication. This is demonstrated by a large-scale study recently published in the journal PLOS Biology. The authors analyzed 36.5 million academic articles and concluded that biomedical and life science research led by women spends more time in the peer-review process than that led by their male colleagues.

The study used a sample of texts indexed in PubMed, the biomedical literature database, and compared the time elapsed between manuscript submission and final acceptance. The results show that studies with women as first authors or corresponding authors experienced this delay.

For researcher David Álvarez-Ponce, a professor at the University of Nevada in the United States, and one of the study’s authors, this delay poses a series of long-term disadvantages for female scientists. “If a person publishes 50 articles during their career, those days they wait multiply. In the end, we’re talking about a significant difference,” he says.

Ana González, director of the Center for Advanced Social Studies at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), agrees. For the sociologist, who did not participate in the study, the most obvious consequence is related to women’s professional advancement and the funding of their research. “If publications are delayed, there are fewer articles, which are still the primary means of scientific advancement,” she points out.