@PlanetDr The editor of the Planetary Science Journal just dug into the background to see why our first 12 papers were all male first author. She's not really on Twitter, so she asked me to post her results. 1/9

First (this is me) I should point out that we have four editors that we brought on board for the PSJ, Faith Vilas, our editor, and Maria Womack @StarzanPlanets, Brian Jackson @decaelus, and Edgard Rivera-Valentin @PlanetTreky. 2/9

Since we are a society journal, these are not pro forma positions. All these people are deeply involved in handling submissions and working with the authors and reviewers. 3/9

Second (this is from Faith) Looking at the submissions to date, we find 32% have female first authors, which is what we would expect, given the membership of the DPS. So far, 30% of the reviewers are female. 4/9

We also see that 2% of the author lists are only females and 33% are only males. (I'm not sure whether or not this says something.) Most of the submitted papers are still under review. There have been a few rejections (all male first author). 5/9

It may be that the string of male first author papers coming out first is just the statistics of small numbers. There are female first author papers in production. We use doubly anonymous reviews, unless the authors opt out, which ought to remove bias. 6/9

(This is me now.) I think there are still some possible systematic effects. Not everyone opts for doubly anonymous review. Some people view it as stigmatizing. 7/9

(Still me) You can find a relevant article by Horstman and Trimble at https://baas.aas.org/pub/2020i0204/release/1. They suggest that in normal times female first author papers at the Astrophysical Journal take about a week longer to get through the system. 8/9

(Still me) These are not normal times. Doubly anonymous review may remove one source of bias, but unequal pressures from personal lives may be exacerbated right now. 9/9