Editorial Feedback

[cgreene]

We have received some elements of editorial feedback that we must address before this can be sent for review:

Thank you for sending your manuscript "Analysis of ISCB honorees and keynotes reveals disparities" to eLife. If you are able to address the points listed below, we would be happy to send your work to external referees for in-depth review as a Feature Article. (In our experience, addressing these points will help to ensure that the reviewers focus on the essential content of your manuscript, rather than being side-tracked by other issues.)

Abstract

• [x] a) Please reword the abstract as follows, replacing XXXX/YYYY/ZZZZ with the relevant figures Delivering a keynote talk at a conference organized by a scientific society, or being named as a fellow by such a society, indicates that a scientist is held in high regard by their colleagues. To explore if the distribution of such indicators of esteem in the field of bioinformatics reflects the composition of this field, we compared the gender, country of affiliation, race/ethnicity and name-origin of 412 researchers who had been recognized by the International Society for Computational Biology (75 fellows and 337 keynote speakers) with XXXX researchers who had been the corresponding authors on papers in three leading bioinformatics journals between YYYY and ZZZZ. The proportion of female fellows and keynote speakers was similar to that of the field overall, However, fellows and keynote speakers with an affiliation in the United States were over-represented by a factor of 1.6; moreover, almost half of this excess was accounted for by a deficit of 41 fellows and keynote authors from China, France and Italy. Furthermore, within the US we found an excess of white fellows and keynote speakers, and a depletion of Asian fellows and keynote speakers. Globally, names of East Asian origin have been persistently underrepresented among fellows and keynote speakers

Introduction

• [x] b) At present the last four sentences of the first paragraph are about bias against African-American/black scientists, which is followed by four sentences about gender bias, which is followed by two sentences about bias against Asian/black/African-American scientists. Please revised so that all of the discussion about bias against Asian/black/African-American scientists come before or after the discussion about gender bias. (I would suggest after to reflect the order of the discussion in the abstract and in the rest of the article)

Materials and methods

• [x] c) eLife uses the introduction/results/discussion/methods format, and if your article is accepted for publication you will need to move the Materials and Methods section to the end of the article. You don't need to this now, but please delete figure 1 as the figures should be reserved for the results of your study. (If you article is accepted, we can discuss reinstating this figure as a supplement later in the article).

Results

• [x] d) Please delete the subsection heading "Curated honorees and . . ."

• [x] e) Please change the sub-section heading "Assessing gender diversity . . . " to a heading that summarizes the findings of this sub-section.

• [x] f) Figure 2: The caption for this figure could be a lot clearer if it described what is shown in the left panel, then described what is shown in the right panel, and then compared the two panels. Also, why is the value of the first column in the left panel zero?

• [x] g) The sub-section "Predicting name origin groups . . . ." belongs in the Materials and methods section

• [x] h) Please move the sub-section "Assessing the name origin diversity . . . " to later in the article so that your results are presented in the following order: i) gender; ii) country of affiliation; iii) biases within the US; iv) name of origin. Please also change the heading of this sub-section to a heading that that summarizes the findings of the sub-section.

• [x] i) Figure 4: This caption could also be a lot clearer, so please revise along the lines suggested for figure 2.

• [x] j) Please change the sub-section heading "Affiliation analysis" to a heading that summarizes the findings of this sub-section.

• [x] k) Does table 2 include any information/data that are not already available if figure 5? if no, it might best to make table 2 a source data file or an additional file.

• [x] l) Please change the sub-section heading "Assessing the racial and ethic diversity. . . " to a heading that summarizes the findings of this sub-section.

• [x] m) Figure 6 would be easier to follow if panel C became panel B (as in figure 2 and figure 4). Also, how essential are panels B and D? If they are not essential they could become a figure supplement to this figure? Also, this caption could also be a lot clearer, so please revise along the lines suggested for figure 2.

• [x] n) Please delete the heading "Assessing the name origin diversity of US-affiliated authors and honorees" so that the analysis of biases within the US is in a single sub-section. If your article is accepted for publication we may need to consider the similarity of figure 4 and figure 7, but we don't need to do anything about this for now.

• [x] o) This final point is a generic point that is based on our experience with previous manuscripts based on surveys. Given the large number of figures and tables in your manuscript, please check that when the text says (see Figure X ), Figure X is indeed the relevant figure (and please do the same for tables). Likewise, please ensure that numbers (like the number of respondents) are consistent throughout the manuscript. In our experience, referees respond badly when a manuscript refers the reader to the wrong figure or table, or when numbers are non consistent throughout the manuscript.

[trangdata]

(g) and part of (c) ("figures should be reserved for the results of your study") are contradictory so we'll go with (g) and addressing the figure positions after.

[trangdata]

h) Please move the sub-section "Assessing the name origin diversity . . . " to later in the article so that your results are presented in the following order: i) gender; ii) country of affiliation; iii) biases within the US; iv) name of origin. Please also change the heading of this sub-section to a heading that that summarizes the findings of the sub-section.

We renamed the subsection heading, but we also performed the name-of-origin analysis within the group of US-affiliated scientists, so we keep order the same (i.e., all US-affiliated results at the end).

[trangdata]

f) Why is the value of the first column in the left panel zero?

In 2000, only two gender predictions were made for two corresponding authors of one paper with the probability of each author being male = 1 and 0.99.

We have added this explanation in the corresponding analysis notebook linked to in this subsection.

[trangdata]

f), i), and m) are mostly related to styles. We previously discussed the main point should be the first sentence of the caption. @cgreene How do you think we should address this?

[cgreene]

@trang1618 if we can retain the first point being an assertion followed by a clearer description I think that's the way to go, but at this point give stronger deference to the editor I guess.

[cgreene]

In 2000, only two gender predictions were made for two corresponding authors of one paper with the probability of each author being male = 1 and 0.99.

I wonder if we should prune years below some level of number of names? It would cost us a couple years on the graph, but those years seem quite unreliable anyway.

[trangdata]

I wonder if we should prune years below some level of number of names? It would cost us a couple years on the graph, but those years seem quite unreliable anyway.

We can, but I think we're pretty transparent about the missing data in the main text and also analysis notebooks already. The reader can also infer the sample size/accuracy of estimates based on the 95% CI we provide in these plots. For example, in this particular case, we can see here that the loess curve starts in 2001.

[trangdata]

Sorry, this automatically closed because I merged the final-checks branch.

[cgreene]

It's all good - I'm willing to adopt a wait and see attitude on this. I realize the answer is there for folks, but sometimes it's easier to have the answer be immediately obvious from a look at each panel of the figure. Still, I can't imagine that leads to a change in how it gets reviewed and the additional reader feedback will be helpful.