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In a move towards better transparency in sex and gender reporting, we are delighted to share that F1000 is now endorsing the Sex & Gender Equity in Research (SAGER) guidelines. F1000Research will now include SAGER guidance in our author guidelines and email communications and provide a checklist for authors.

What are the SAGER guidelines?

The SAGER guidelines were developed to encourage reporting of sex and gender in research and improve the balance of data collected. Scientific research has historically failed to account for sex and gender in both research design and scientific communications. This has meant that there is missing data in many areas, including medicine and healthcare, where women’s health issues are often misdiagnosed or missed, and clinical trials use mostly male cells and male animals. Male bias has resulted in health risks; between 1997 and 2000, eight of 10 prescription drugs were found to have dangerous effects and showed more severe effects in women.

This bias extends to other areas such as occupational risks and technology. Advancements have been made in previously biased research designs. Notably, the creation of crash test dummies that represent women’s bodies after decades of testing on male-based dummies. But retrospective improvements often fail to account for women more fundamentally. A review of test models in safety assessment tests found that spinal alignment and neck differences in males and females are crucial considerations for future designs.

What will be the impact on research?

Sex and gender differences need to be included from the outset of the research design to improve transparency and produce accurate findings., Research should “include gender at all relevant phases of research — when setting priorities, gathering and analyzing data, evaluating results, developing patents and, finally, transferring ideas to markets,” says Londa Schiebinger, who chaired the second report on Gendered Innovations, a Horizon 2020 funded project providing researchers with tools for sex and gender analysis. “Science and technology should take into account the biological and social needs of both women and men.”

Endorsing the SAGER guidelines

The SAGER guidelines provide authors of studies where sex and gender may be relevant with a tool to guide their reporting. This guidance has been implemented by a number of journals, and we are pleased to be the first F1000 Platform to implement these guidelines for authors. Other Platforms powered by F1000, including Wellcome Open Research and HRB Open Research, will also be rolling out these changes before the end of the year.

The SAGER guidelines outline how authors should take sex and gender into account in each stage of their article. They also address crucial distinctions such as the difference between sex and gender, which is often confused in scientific research, and how sex is defined, whether by self-report, assigned by a participant’s external or internal characteristics, or through genetic testing. This will encourage researchers to be more transparent in reporting the rationale behind their studies and encourage others to think more about sex and gender distinctions.

How can authors meet the SAGER guidelines?

When reporting the results of a study, authors should present their data disaggregated by sex and gender. This enables greater reproducibility as the data can be used in other studies to analyze sex and gender differences, even if this wasn’t done in the original analysis. The implications of sex and gender on the results should also be discussed and, if a sex and gender analysis weren’t conducted, the rationale for this should be given, and the authors should discuss the implications of this on the results. Prompting authors to consider how sex and gender were or weren’t analyzed in their research, and how this impacts the generalisability of their results, can enable deeper insights into how, and to what extent, sex and gender is used in research and highlight missing opportunities for development.

F1000 has always been committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion in data. Now, the SAGER guidelines will enable our authors to improve the quality and transparency of their research, and our editorial team will be able to offer more specific guidance during prepublication checks. By endorsing SAGER as a standard, researchers that publish on F1000Research and other F1000 Platforms will contribute to developing quality reporting and accurate data to address sex and gender biases in scientific research.

To learn more about the SAGER guidelines, read this handy table summary.