Gender and ethnic differences in publication of BMJ letters to the editor: an observational study using machine learning.

ABSTRACT:

Objectives

To analyse the relationship between first author's gender and ethnicity (estimated from first name and surname), and chance of publication of rapid responses in the British Medical Journal (BMJ). To analyse whether other features of the rapid response account for any gender or ethnic differences, including the presence of multiple authors, declaration of conflicts of interests, the presence of Twitter handle, word count, reading ease, spelling and grammatical mistakes, and the presence of references.

Design

A retrospective observational study.

Setting

Website of the BMJ (BMJ.com).

Participants

Publicly available rapid responses submitted to BMJ.com between 1998 and 2018.

Main outcome measures

Publication of a rapid response as a letter

SUBMITTER: Zeina M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7754629 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature