Female citation impact superiority 1996–2018 in six out of seven English‐speaking nations

Disciplinary gender balance, research productivity, and recognition of men and women in academia

Gender disparities in science have become a salient concern for policy makers and researchers. Previous studies have documented a gender gap in research productivity and recognition in the sciences, and different reasons for this gap have been proposed. In this study, we examine four academic fields with different proportions of men and women in their population. We address the following questions: What is the relationship between the gendered make-up of a field and the productivity and recognition of men and women scientists in that academic field? What is the relationship between the publication patterns of men and women in different academic fields and their productivity and recognition? We find that gendered patterns of productivity and recognition favour men in man-dominated subfields (Mathematical Physics and Software Engineering), while women were more productive and highly cited in one woman-dominated subfield (Nursing), though not in another (Psychology). Nursing, a woman-gendered field, provides an interesting counterpoint to the most usual findings regarding gender disparities in academia. Our findings highlight the need to disaggregate academic fields and to bring to the forefront other disciplines that remain under investigated in analyses of gender gaps to potentially elucidate conflicting findings in the literature.

The gender citation gap: Why and how it matters

The weight of evidence suggests that articles written by men and women receive citations at comparable rates. This suggests that research quality or gender-based bias in research evaluation and citing behaviors may not be the reason why academic women accumulate fewer citations than men at the career level. In this article, I outline a career perspective that highlights women's disadvantages in career progression as the root causes for the gender citation gap. I also consider how the gender citation gap may perpetuate the unequal pay between genders in science. My analysis of two different datasets, one including paper and citation information for over 130,000 highly cited scholars during the 1996-2020 period and another including citation and salary information for nearly 2,000 Canadian scholars over the 2014-2019 period, shows several important findings. First, papers written by women on average receive more citations than those written by men. Second, the gender citation gap grows larger with time as men and women progress in their careers, but the opposite pattern holds when research productivity and collaborative networks are considered. Third, higher citations lead to higher pay, and gender differences in citations explain a significant share of the gender wage gap. Findings demonstrate the critical need for more attention toward gender differences in career progression when investigating the causes and solutions for gender disparities in science.

Gender gaps in Australian research publishing, citation and co-authorship

Despite improvement in gender inequality in Australian science, the problem has not been fully addressed yet. To better understand the nature of gender inequality in Australian science, all gendered Australian first authored articles published between 2010 and 2020 and indexed in the Dimensions database were analysed. Field of Research (FoR) was used as the subject classification of articles and Field Citation Ratio (FCR) was used for citation comparison. Overall, the ratio of female to male first authored articles increased over the years, and this was true for all FoRs except for information and computing sciences. The ratio of single-authored articles by females was also improved over the study period. Females appeared to have a citation advantage, using Field Citation Ratio, over males in a few FoRs including mathematical sciences, chemical sciences, technology, built environment and design, studies in human society, law and legal studies, and studies in creative arts and writing. The average FCR for female first authored articles was greater than the average FCR for male first authored articles, including in a few fields such mathematical sciences where male authors outperformed females in terms of the number of articles.

Why so Few, Still? Challenges to Attracting, Advancing, and Keeping Women Faculty of Color in Academia

From its earliest beginnings, the university was not designed for women, and certainly not for women of color. Women of color in the United States are disproportionately under-represented in academia and are conspicuous by their absence across disciplines at senior ranks, particularly at research-intensive universities. This absence has an epistemic impact and affects future generations of scholars who do not see themselves represented in the academy. What are the barriers to attracting, advancing, and retaining women faculty of color in academia? To address this question we review empirical studies that document disparities in the assessment of research, teaching, and service in academia that have distinct implications for the hiring, promotion, and professional visibility of women of color. We argue that meaningful change in the representation, equity, and prestige of women faculty of color will require validating their experiences, supporting and valuing their research, creating opportunities for their professional recognition and advancement, and implementing corrective action for unjust assessment practices.

Leadership diversity in science: Women editors of dental journals are underrepresented compared to women editors of medical journals

OBJECTIVES

Increasing numbers of women are entering dentistry and medicine and it is anticipated that global leadership positions represent this demographic. In this study, the proportion of women editors of prominent medical and dental journals was compared.

METHODS

A list of dental and medical journals, ranked by impact factor, were obtained through Web of Science Journal Citation Reports 2020. Chief and associate editors of these journals were identified as either a woman or a man.

RESULTS

Ninety one dental journals had 100 editors, 15 of whom were women. There were significantly less women chief editors than men (p < 0.0001) compared to the percentage expected (global proportion of women and men dental scientists [IADR] membership: 43.72% women). Of ninety one comparable medical journals ranked by impact factor, there were 103 chief editors, 41 of whom were women. There was no significant difference in the number of men and women chief editors for medical journals (p = 0.242). There were significantly fewer women chief editors for dental journals compared to medical journals (p < 0.0001). There was no significant difference between the mean impact factor for journals with women and men editors for dental (p = 0.556) or medical (p = 0.492) journals. For the 91 dental journals, there were a total of 828 associate editors, of whom 638 were men and 190 were women and this difference was significant (p < 0.0001).

CONCLUSIONS

The results demonstrate that women in dental research have attained editor positions with less frequency than men indicating the presence of barriers to progress in scientific dental publishing.

Gender differences in the Israeli academia: a bibliometric analysis of different disciplines

Purpose

This study explores faculty members' outputs and citations by gender and academic rank in Israeli academia. The study focuses on the connection between research productivity and underrepresentation of women in academia. To this end, four fields were chosen, each representing a different discipline: Psychology (social sciences), Public Health (health sciences), Linguistics (humanities), and Chemistry (Exact sciences).

Design/methodology/approach

The name, the rank and the gender of the researchers were collected from the researchers' websites and those of their departments. The number of publications and citations were retrieved from Scopus.

Findings

Findings revealed that there is a significant difference between the median number of men and women in Chemistry concerning publications and citations and in Psychology concerning citations. Moreover, in all four disciplines, females' average number of publications was lower than that of males', and that in three out of the four disciplines (Psychology, Public Health and Chemistry), men published more in top journals (the top 5%) than females, while the reverse was true of Linguistics. Furthermore, in three disciplines (Public Health, Linguistics and Chemistry), there is an increase in the average citations per female researchers between 2015 and 2019. Further, in all disciplines, women collaborated more than men.

Originality/value

As only a few studies in Israel have explored faculty members' outputs and citations, this study contributes and enlarges the Israeli research concerning this topic.

Greater female first author citation advantages do not associate with reduced or reducing gender disparities in academia

Ongoing problems attracting women into many Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) subjects have many potential explanations. This article investigates whether the possible undercitation of women associates with lower proportions of, or increases in, women in a subject. It uses six million articles published in 1996–2012 across up to 331 fields in six mainly English-speaking countries: Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States. The proportion of female first- and last-authored articles in each year was calculated and 4,968 regressions were run to detect first-author gender advantages in field normalized article citations. The proportion of female first authors in each field correlated highly between countries and the female first-author citation advantages derived from the regressions correlated moderately to strongly between countries, so both are relatively field specific. There was a weak tendency in the United States and New Zealand for female citation advantages to be stronger in fields with fewer women, after excluding small fields, but there was no other association evidence. There was no evidence of female citation advantages or disadvantages to be a cause or effect of changes in the proportions of women in a field for any country. Inappropriate uses of career-level citations are a likelier source of gender inequities.