Does writing style affect gender differences in the research performance of articles?: An empirical study of BERT-based textual sentiment analysis

“Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls” is essential to reduce gender disparity and improve the status of women. But it remains a challenge to narrow gender differences and improve gender equality in academic research. In this paper, we propose that the impact of articles is lower and writing style of articles is less positive when the article’s first author is female relative to male first authors, and writing style mediates this relationship. Focusing on the positive writing style, we attempt to contribute and explain the research on gender differences in research performance. We use BERT-based textual sentiment analysis to analyse 87 years of 9820 articles published in the top four marketing journals and prove our hypotheses. We also consider a set of control variables and conduct a set of robustness checks to ensure the robustness of our findings. We discuss the theoretical and managerial implications of our findings for researchers.

Determining factors of participation and success rates in research funding competitions: Case study

Research and innovation play a key role in generating smart and sustainable economic growth. By producing new knowledge, the research contributes to the development of new and innovative products, processes, and services, which in turn lead to increased productivity, industrial competitiveness, and, ultimately, the prosperity of the community as a whole. However, all research, development and innovation activities depend on the financial resources made available, as specific financing accelerates the production and dissemination of the best ideas and practices, as well as their role in meeting the challenges our society deals with nowadays. Our study aims to identify the determining factors for the researcher’s participation and success rates in research funding competitions. The goal of the research is to understand how variables such as age, gender, main field, affiliation, and scientific rank can affect the access to funding opportunities available for research and innovation. The study relies on a questionnaire-based survey conducted with 243 early-career and senior researchers from many state universities across Romania. For an in-depth analysis of the factors that influence the success rate in research competitions, in the present approach, we used both graphical and econometric methods. A binary logistic regression modelling was performed in order to explain the relationships between variables. Among other considerations, our findings revealed that in all main research fields, scientific rank and gender are important features for raising the participation and success rate in research funding competitions.

Evidence of research mastery: How applicants argue the feasibility of their research projects

Although many studies have shown that reviewers particularly value the feasibility of a proposed project, very little attention has gone to how applicants try to establish the plausibility of their proposal’s realization. With a sample of 335 proposals, we examined the ways applicants reason the feasibility of their projects and the kinds of evidence they provide to support those assertions. We identified three kinds of evidence for mastering research: the scope of scientific skills, the presence of different assets, and the use of stylistic techniques. Applicants draw on them to align the project with scientific standards, embed it in the current state of research, and meet the scientific field’s expectations of how scientists should conduct a project. These kinds of evidence help substantiate a project’s feasibility and to distinguish the project from other proposals. Such evidence seems to correspond with a project’s positive review and approval (grant success). Evidence of research mastery was cited more often by the authors of the successful (approved) proposals than by the authors of the unsuccessful ones. The applicants of the successful proposals gave details of their planned experiments, emphasized their broad methodological and technical competence, and referred to their own preliminary scientific work.

The impact of gender on scientific writing: An observational study of grant proposals

OBJECTIVES

This study aimed to determine whether there are differences in the language used in grant applications submitted to a Southern Brazil Research Support Foundation (FAPERGS) according to the gender, career stage, and the number of publications of applicants.

STUDY DESIGN AND SETTING

This observational study also evaluated the relationship between gender, career stage, curriculum, and writing characteristics. Summaries of all research proposals in the biomedical field of FAPERGS during the years of 2013 and 2014 were evaluated according to six language patterns (Positive emotions, Negative emotions, Analytic thinking, Clout, Authenticity, and Emotional tone) defined by the LIWC software. Applicant's gender, career stage, and the number of publications were also collected.

RESULTS

Three hundred and forty-four (344) grant proposals met the inclusion criteria and were included in the analysis. No statistical differences were observed in the language pattern used by different gender applicants. In the language used by successful and unsuccessful applicants, we only found a small difference for clout (score 54.5 for not funded and 56.5 for funded grants). However, the principal investigators of successful applications had a significantly higher number of papers published (mean number of papers: 104 versus 58.5).

CONCLUSIONS

Gender bias appears to be a more complex problem than just the type of language used; the way society is organized causes several gender biases that may be reflected throughout the women's career.

Are we paying-to-play? A quantitative assessment of Canadian open access research in ecology and evolution

Open access (OA) allows for peer-reviewed research to be freely accessed and there has been a collective shift from both researchers and publishers towards more OA publishing. OA typically occurs either through article-processing charges (the gold road) or via self-archiving (the green road); the former can be expensive, while the latter has seen minimal uptake. The gold road of OA has led to predatory publishers and, to some, questionable publications. Here, I used publicly available grant information in Canada and combined this with individual publishing statistics to test a variety of factors and their influence on OA publishing. I showed that an individual’s award amount, H-index, and gender did not influence the proportion of OA articles they published, but an individual’s H-index scaled with the number of OA publications. Institute size influenced OA publishing patterns, with researchers at large universities (i.e., >20 000 full-time students) publishing proportionately more OA articles than medium and small institutes. I discuss the potential for this pattern to build on pre-existing systemic biases when it comes to funding and publishing.