Comparison of Editor, Reviewer, and Author Demographics in The Journal of Hand Surgery

To determine whether demographic differences exist among editors, reviewers, and authors in The Journal of Hand Surgery (JHS). We aimed to test the null hypothesis that there would be no difference among these 3 groups with respect to gender, geographic location, academic productivity, and financial relationships with industry.

Editors, reviewers, and physician authors were identified for 2018 JHS. Gender and geographic location were recorded for each person. We used the Scopus database to determine the Hirsch index (h-index) as well as the number of publications and citations for members of each group. Industry payment information was obtained using the Open Payments Web site.

The editor group contained 20% women compared with the author group (17% women). Authors (59%) were less likely to be from the United States compared with editors (91%) and reviewers (88%). Editors were found to have a higher h-index (16) compared with reviewers (14) and authors (12). Authors demonstrated significantly higher mean total payments from industry ($41,738) compared with editors ($13,712) and reviewers ($20,457).

In 2018, there appeared to be an even distribution with respect to gender among editors, authors and reviewers in the JHS. International editors and reviewers are relatively under-represented compared to authors. Whereas editors and reviewers demonstrated higher h-indices compared with authors, JHS authors had significantly higher mean total payments in the Open Payments database.

Defining demographics, academic productivity, and conflicts of interest for journal editors, reviewers, and authors may aid in identifying potential sources of both author and peer review bias.