Publishing a journal article is becoming increasingly important for embarking on and consolidating an academic career. Yet we know there is a gender gap in political science journals.
Since 2015, ECPR has been monitoring and reporting on this gap in the submitted and published articles in its own journals (including EPSR) in its Gender Study. We also know that, ceteris paribus, women are cited less frequently than men, and that bibliographies do not represent fairly the proportion of women and minorities working in the field.
Over the next three years we will therefore run an experiment at EPSR, encouraging authors to consider whether their bibliography correctly represents the proportion of women and minorities working in their field, with the aim of reducing gender and possible other gaps in citations. If the experiment is successful, ECPR will consider rolling the changes outlined below to its other journals.
From 2023, we will introduce two new initiatives
1. Authors must tick a box confirming that their bibliography fairly represents the women and minorities working in their field. This encourages them to consider representation pre-submission, and to revisit the literature if necessary.
2. EPSR will adopt a referencing style which includes the authors' first names, to raise awareness among readers of gender representation in the bibliography.
We will evaluate the success of this initiative after three years by comparing the number of women being cited in the journal before and after these nudges were introduced, alongside the other journal data published by ECPR each year.
We acknowledge, and fully respect the fact that, for different reasons, it is not possible to accurately deduce gender from the authors' name; and that gender is not binary, so all data will be presented and considered with this caveat. However, we believe that naming authors in the bibliography gives us a reasonable idea of the average gender representation. We hope these measures will encourage our community to think more carefully about gender balance.
For more information about how to prepare your materials for publication in EPSR, click here or contact Editorial Coordinator Haritha Balasubramaniyan at epsr@ecpr.eu.
