Romelyn - I can only speak for myself - but I've not encountered it before and I review for over 40 international journals. Effective manuscript reviews should be based on central principles i.e. balanced, neutral, objective and critically constructive - regrdless of ethnicity, gender or any other social factor. I would encourage anyone who feels that their basic human rights have been compromised to write to journal editors - citing the offending material.

Hi Romelyn,

I have witnessed a case that you have stated and it is never normal or ok. However, you mentioned that "you think that articles are rejected or comments are too mean based on ethnicity and just being female". It is important to address this with the publisher/editor, whoever is the relevant body and identify are they actually rejected on the basis of gender and ethnicity or do these articles actually fail to contribute to the field and create confusion around the research subject.

The first thing in publishing a paper is "to be ready for being reviewed and criticized." Well-known journals work with reviewers that are best in their field and thus you have to expect to get a very detailed review!

Also, by having a glance at google.scholar, you would find a numerous number of publications with female authors.

I understand that some times you feel that the importance or novelty of your work is not appreciated, but just try to look at your paper from the reviewer's eyes.

Yes, it is very common. Some journals only consider papers from the authors of high income countries such as US, UK, China, Australia, New Zealand, and Europe. I have had papers rejected merely based on the argument that the data is from a developing country and may not be applicable to global community. Arguably, the same can be held true for data from the high income countries. Some editors are biased against authors from low and middle income countries and some even have their pet authors and reviewers who only publish in these journals. Sometimes, reviewers and authors reject papers to increase the impact of their journals. However, there are good editors and reviewers who review for highest quality journals and evaluate papers based on quality of science and writing.

Good responses here from all. Talking specifically about culture (might we also be talking about region/geographical location here?) as I agree with Amin that, related to gender, there is a much better balance of female authors (maybe not always as leads - but as part of teams - and that might be another discussion) in todays academic climate.

So I come back to location/culture here. It is, as I see it, a 'double-edged sword'. If I see good quality research coming out of 'emerging' research cultures/locations then I feel it should be championed over the 'usual' Western-centric research of the same quality. I will make a point in my comments that it is useful to have a 'truely' international perspective of the issue - not just from a Westernised perspective. On the other hand, I would argue that 50% (or so) of 'cultural' manuscript submissions are not of a good enough quality. There are common pitfalls i.e. the national context is stressed too much over the international context (as is the data). That makes it hard to compare and, often, the cited national literature would be hard to access/interpret. Secondly, and more avoidable, is if their are multiple grammatical, language, typo errors throuhgout that distract the reviewer and make it more difficult to interpret findings.

I agree with Dean that sometimes the the presentation of research is inadequate to offer implications for the global research community. Despite this, the bias of journals towards different field, ethnic group, and countries is quite prevalent. This new research shed light on this issue.

"Research assessments based on journal rankings systematically marginalise knowledge from certain regions and subjects. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2017/10/30/research-assessments-based-on-journal-rankings-systematically-marginalise-knowledge-from-certain-regions-and-subjects/

To me, beauty of research's manuscript NOVELTY+WELL-PRESENTED FORM is universally shiny/attractive/ACKNOWLEDGED property. I think denial from such facts may never be possible for any reviewer/MARKER. To me, during review or grading, the main focus is on every aspect and overall quality of the paper. If the manuscript contains good novelty and good presentation the reviewers getting impressed/excited and enjoying it without any type of racial/cultural/religion/gender/age etc., discrimination.

TO ME, during peer review conferences/journal/chapters/thesis/paper etc., DISCRIMINATION IS BASED ON QUALITY OF THE MANUSCRIPT ONLY...The main objective of peer review is to check the manuscript and to highlight its grading and leveling.