Perceived gender inequities in the scholarly publishing process: before, during and after

Abstract

Academic publishing is central to the creation, evaluation and dissemination of scholarship and is closely linked to academics’ career advancement. As a socially constructed system, the production of academic knowledge is also mediated by gender. We know, for example, that male academics publish more on average than female academics (Lundine et al., 2019; Symonds et al., 2006), they publish in higher-ranking journals (Mayer & Rathmann, 2018) and are more likely to be named as first authors (Filardo et al., 2016). Less is known, however, about the ways in which gender inequality manifests itself in less visible and harder-to-quantify ways at various stages of the publication process. This chapter takes the theoretical position that academic writing is a social practice, (Lillis & Scott, 2007) with the gendered dimensions of scholarly writing and publishing as its empirical object. Following McLean (2020), who examined social injustice at various phases of higher education, this chapter reflects on women’s experiences at three stages of the academic publishing process, namely gaining access to opportunities to publish, participating in the submission and review process, and being fairly represented in the outcomes. It reports findings from interviews with female academics at different career stages working in humanities and social sciences disciplines in UK universities.