Scientific Eminence: Where Are the Women?

Gender disparities in social and personality psychology awards from 1968 to 2021

Gender disparities persist in academic psychology. The present study extended previous investigations to social and personality psychology award recipients. We collated publicly available data on award winners (N = 2700) from 17 international societies from 1968 to 2021. Features of the award, including year given, type of award, seniority level, whether the award was shared with more than one winner, and gender/sex of the recipient were coded. Overall, men were more likely to be recognized with awards than women, but the proportion of awards won by women has increased over time. Despite this increased share of awards, women were more likely to win awards for service and teaching (which are generally viewed as less prestigious) rather than research contributions. These differences were moderated by year - women were more likely to win service or teaching awards, compared to research awards, after 1999 and 2007, respectively. Women were more likely to win awards at postgraduate/early career levels or open to all levels compared to senior awards. Findings suggest that women's greater representation in academic psychology in recent years has not been accompanied by parity in professional recognition and eminence.

Gender imbalances in the editorial activities of a selective journal run by academic editors

The fairness of decisions made at various stages of the publication process is an important topic in meta-research. Here, based on an analysis of data on the gender of authors, editors and reviewers for 23,876 initial submissions and 7,192 full submissions to the journal eLife, we report on five stages of the publication process. We find that the board of reviewing editors (BRE) is men-dominant (69%) and that authors disproportionately suggest male editors when making an initial submission. We do not find evidence for gender bias when Senior Editors consult Reviewing Editors about initial submissions, but women Reviewing Editors are less engaged in discussions about these submissions than expected by their proportion. We find evidence of gender homophily when Senior Editors assign full submissions to Reviewing Editors (i.e., men are more likely to assign full submissions to other men (77% compared to the base assignment rate to men RE of 70%), and likewise for women (41% compared to women RE base assignment rate of 30%))). This tendency was stronger in more gender-balanced scientific disciplines. However, we do not find evidence for gender bias when authors appeal decisions made by editors to reject submissions. Together, our findings confirm that gender disparities exist along the editorial process and suggest that merely increasing the proportion of women might not be sufficient to eliminate this bias. Measures accounting for women's circumstances and needs (e.g., delaying discussions until all RE are engaged) and raising editorial awareness to women's needs may be essential to increasing gender equity and enhancing academic publication.

Economic geography of innovation: The effect of gender-related aspects of co-inventor networks on country and regional innovation

This paper focuses on the analysis of the effects of inventor networks on country and regional innovation. We use data from an OECD inventor database that spans more than forty years to build collaboration networks in which the network nodes are countries and regions, and linkages are patents produced by inventors from different regions and countries. We first investigate the network that includes all inventors and then analyze the network focusing on women inventors. We argue that both country and regional-level network centrality positively affect country and regional innovation (with stronger effects at the country level), and centrality in collaborations that involve women has an additional positive impact. We also find that women inventors' share in the pool of inventors is positively associated with innovation quality both at the county and regional levels. Furthermore, our findings indicate that in the network of women inventors, countries and regions that are in cohesive clusters (formed by repeated interactions between interconnected actors) show stronger innovation performance. Our study also highlights important nuances between country-level and region-level effects.

Contextualizing Gender Disparity in Editorship in Psychological Science

Discourse on gender diversity tends to overlook differences across levels of hierarchy (e.g., students, faculty, and editors) and critical dimensions (e.g., subdisciplines and geographical locations). Further ignored is its intersection with global diversity-representation from different countries. Here we document and contextualize gender disparity from perspectives of equal versus expected representation in journal editorship, by analyzing 68 top psychology journals in 10 subdisciplines. First, relative to ratios as students and faculty, women are underrepresented as editorial-board members (41%) and-unlike previous results based on one subfield-as editors-in-chief (34%) as well. Second, female ratios in editorship vary substantially across subdisciplines, genres of scholarship (higher in empirical and review journals than in method journals), continents/countries/regions (e.g., higher in North America than in Europe), and journal countries of origin (e.g., higher in American journals than in European journals). Third, under female (vs. male) editors-in-chief, women are much better represented as editorial-board members (47% vs. 36%), but the geographical diversity of editorial-board members and authorship decreases. These results reveal new local and broad contexts of gender diversity in editorship in psychology, with policy implications. Our approach also offers a methodological guideline for similar disparity research in other fields.

Bibliometric and visual analysis of microglia-related neuropathic pain from 2000 to 2021

Background

Microglia has gradually gained researchers' attention in the past few decades and has shown its promising prospect in treating neuropathic pain. Our study was performed to comprehensively evaluate microglia-related neuropathic pain via a bibliometric approach.

Methods

We retrospectively reviewed publications focusing on microglia-related neuropathic pain from 2000 to 2021 in WoSCC. VOS viewer software and CiteSpace software were used for statistical analyses.

Results

A total of 2,609 articles were finally included. A steady increase in the number of relevant publications was observed in the past two decades. China is the most productive country, while the United States shares the most-cited and highest H-index country. The University of London, Kyushu University, and the University of California are the top 3 institutions with the highest number of publications. Molecular pain and Pain are the most productive and co-cited journals, respectively. Inoue K (Kyushu University) is the most-contributed researcher and Ji RR (Duke University) ranks 1st in both average citations per article and H-index. Keywords analyses revealed that pro-inflammatory cytokines shared the highest burst strength. Sex differences, neuroinflammation, and oxidative stress are the emerging keywords in recent years.

Conclusion

In the field of microglia-related neuropathic pain, China is the largest producer and the United States is the most influential country. The signaling communication between microglia and neurons has continued to be vital in this field. Sexual dimorphism, neuroinflammation, and stem-cell therapies might be emerging trends that should be closely monitored.

Gender bias in special issues: evidence from a bibliometric analysis

Even though the majority of psychologists are women, they are outnumbered by men in senior academic ranks. One reason for this representation bias in academia is that men favor other men in decision-making, especially when the stakes are high. We tested the possibility of such bias in a bibliometric analysis, in which we coded editors' and authors' gender in regular and special issues, the latter considered of higher scientific prominence. We examined all special issues from five prominent scientific outlets in the fields of personality and social psychology published in the twenty-first century. Altogether, we analyzed 1911 articles nested in 93 sets comprising a special issue and a neighboring regular issue treated as a control condition. For articles published in special (but not regular) issues, when there were more men editors, more men first-authored and co-authored the work. This pattern suggests how gender bias can be perpetuated within academia and calls for revising the editorial policies of leading psychology journals.

Epistemological Allyship

Discussions about decolonising psychology now abound. A key perspective from which these commentaries have been written relates to a confrontation of the gatekeepers in global psychology. While this approach is valuable to end epistemological violence and other forms of injustice, it also ends up alienating influential scholars in hegemonic psychology who can magnify the impact of the decolonisation effort. In this article, I borrow from the anti-racism literature the concept of allyship to put forward a new concept of epistemological allyship (EA). I position EA to invite, but not to demand, support from and to provide guidance to gatekeepers who truly wish to support the decolonisation efforts. However, unlike the past experiences with ending slavery in which Black people were portrayed to or required to beg for freedom, this concept of EA is not to be understood in this light. Rather it should be understood to imply that while academics from the majority of the world (AMWs) are fighting their own epistemological battles, any helpful support is and should be welcome.

The gender gap in political psychology

Introduction

I investigated the authorship gender gap in research on political psychology.

Methods

The material comprises 1,166 articles published in the field's flagship journal Political Psychology between 1997 and 2021. These were rated for author gender, methodology, purpose, and topic.

Results

Women were underrepresented as authors (37.1% women), single authors (33.5% women), and lead authors (35.1% women). There were disproportionately many women lead authors in papers employing interviews or qualitative methodology, and in research with an applied purpose (these were all less cited). In contrast, men were overrepresented as authors of papers employing quantitative methods. Regarding topics, women were overrepresented as authors on Gender, Identity, Culture and Language, and Religion, and men were overrepresented as authors on Neuroscience and Evolutionary Psychology.

Discussion

The (denigrated) methods, purposes, and topics of women doing research on politics correspond to the (denigrated) "feminine style" of women doing politics grounding knowledge in the concrete, lived reality of others; listening and giving voice to marginalized groups' subjective experiences; and yielding power to get things done for others.

Navigating the leaky pipeline: Do stereotypes about parents predict career outcomes in academia?

The motherhood penalty seemingly reflects a preference to hire female professionals who are not parents compared to mothers, however, little is known about whether this effect is attributable to parent stereotypes per se. Study 1 assessed the content of the parent-academia stereotypes of 180 individuals working in Education and revealed stronger stereotypical associations of fathers with academia than mothers. Study 2 investigated what parent-academia stereotypes predict in terms of endorsements for hiring men versus women in a mock hiring task set in an academic context. Academics (N = 112) evaluated mock job candidates for an Assistant Professor post while the gender, parental status and leave status of the candidates were manipulated. The findings showed that parents were significantly less likely to be endorsed to be hired than non-parents, regardless of gender. Parent-academia stereotypes led to biased hiring recommendations, such that a greater endorsement of parent-academia stereotypes predicted a reduced likelihood to endorse hiring parents compared to non-parents. Implications for reducing parent stereotypes in academic contexts are discussed.

Automated citation recommendation tools encourage questionable citations

Citing practices have long been at the heart of scientific reporting, playing both socially and epistemically important functions in science. While such practices have been relatively stable over time, recent attempts to develop automated citation recommendation tools have the potential to drastically impact citing practices. We claim that, even though such tools may come with tempting advantages, their development and implementation should be conducted with caution. Describing the role of citations in science’s current publishing and social reward structures, we argue that automated citation tools encourage questionable citing practices. More specifically, we describe how such tools may lead to an increase in: perfunctory citation and sloppy argumentation; affirmation biases; and Matthew effects. In addition, a lack of transparency of the tools’ underlying algorithmic structure renders their usage problematic. Hence, we urge that the consequences of citation recommendation tools should at least be understood and assessed before any attempts to implementation or broad distribution are undertaken.

"Broad" Impact: Perceptions of Sex/Gender-Related Psychology Journals

Because men are overrepresented within positions of power, men are perceived as the default in academia (androcentrism). Androcentric bias emerges whereby research by men and/or dominated by men is perceived as higher quality and gains more attention. We examined if these androcentric biases materialize within fields that study bias (psychology). How do individuals in close contact with psychology view psychology research outlets (i.e., journals) with titles including the words women, gender, sex, or feminism (sex/gender-related) or contain the words men or masculinity (men-related; Study 1) versus psychology journals that publish other-specialized research, and do these perceptions differ in the general public? While the men-related journal was less meritorious than its other-specialty journal, evidence emerged supporting androcentric bias such that the men-related journal was more favorable than the other sex/gender-related journals (Study 1). Further, undergraduate men taking psychology classes rated sex/gender-related versus other-specialty journals as less favorable, were less likely to recommend subscription (Studies 1-2), and rated the journals as lower quality (Study 2 only). Low endorsement of feminist ideology was associated with less support for sex/gender-related journals versus matched other-specialty journals (Studies 1-2). Decreased subscription recommendations for sex/gender-related journals (and the men-related journal) were mediated by decreased favorability and quality beliefs, especially for men (for the sex/gender-related journals) and those low in feminist ideology (Studies 1-2). However, we found possible androcentric-interest within the public sphere. The public reach of articles (as determined by Altmetrics) published in sex/gender-related was greater than other-specialty journals (Study 3). The consequences of these differential perceptions for students versus the public and the impact on women's advancement in social science and psychological science are discussed.

The “Equal-Opportunity Jerk” Defense: Rudeness Can Obfuscate Gender Bias

To address sexism, people must first recognize it. In this research, we identified a barrier that makes sexism hard to recognize: rudeness toward men. We found that observers judge a sexist perpetrator as less sexist if he is rude toward men. This occurs because rudeness toward men creates the illusion of gender blindness. We documented this phenomenon in five preregistered studies consisting of online adult participants and adult students from professional schools (total N = 4,663). These attributions are problematic because sexism and rudeness are not mutually exclusive. Men who hold sexist beliefs about women can be—and often are—rude toward other men. These attributions also discourage observers from holding perpetrators accountable for gender bias. Thus, rudeness toward men gives sexist perpetrators plausible deniability. It protects them and prevents the first perceptual step necessary to address sexism.

Gender bias in the allocation of student grants

Multiple studies have shown that women’s likelihood of receiving research funding is lower than that of their male colleagues. Thus far, all research on this gender gap in academia has focused on post-PhD academics, making it difficult to discern whether the female disadvantages in number of publications, previous grants, maternity leave, and h-indexes are at the root of the gender gap in received funding, or whether it is due to a more fundamental gender bias in academia. Therefore, we investigated whether female university students are already disadvantaged in receiving their first grant in their scientific career. We analysed data on applications (N = 2651) from 1995 to 2018 to the Leiden University International Study Fund (LISF), a fund dedicated to support students to study or conduct research abroad. We found that men and women applied equally often to the LISF. However, women had a lower success rate, which seemed to only get worse over recent years. Furthermore, male and female applications were assessed to be equal in quality when gender-related information was removed from them. The current study demonstrates that the factors that were assumed to contribute the most to the gender gap in more senior academics (e.g. previous grants, h-index) do not explain it fully: even when those factors do not yet play a role, such as in our student sample, women were found to have lower success rates than men. This underscores the importance of attacking gender biases at its roots.

Gender disparities in middle authorship

Women increasingly occupy jobs in psychological research, but continue to face career barriers. One such barrier is fewer authorship and publication opportunities, with women often having fewer first authorships than men. In this research, we examine the overlooked role of middle authorship. Middle authorship contributes to various indices of productivity, while having lower costs. Study 1 looks at five years of authorship in two major journals in social and personality psychology. Study 2 examines publication records of all social psychology faculty in the Netherlands. Both studies find that women have fewer authorship possibilities: In Study 1, women were underrepresented as authors in academic journals, while women in Study 2 had shorter publication lists. More importantly, this tendency was exacerbated for middle authorship positions. Furthermore, the percentage of middle authorship publications were positively related to more publications overall. A focus on middle authorship highlights previously underestimated challenges women continue to face in psychological research.

The Future of Women in Psychological Science

There has been extensive discussion about gender gaps in representation and career advancement in the sciences. However, psychological science itself has yet to be the focus of discussion or systematic review, despite our field's investment in questions of equity, status, well-being, gender bias, and gender disparities. In the present article, we consider 10 topics relevant for women's career advancement in psychological science. We focus on issues that have been the subject of empirical study, discuss relevant evidence within and outside of psychological science, and draw on established psychological theory and social-science research to begin to chart a path forward. We hope that better understanding of these issues within the field will shed light on areas of existing gender gaps in the discipline and areas where positive change has happened, and spark conversation within our field about how to create lasting change to mitigate remaining gender differences in psychological science.

The Gender Gap: Who Is (and Is Not) Included on Graduate-Level Syllabi in Social/Personality Psychology

We contacted a random sample of social/personality psychologists in the United States and asked for copies of their graduate syllabi. We coded more than 3,400 papers referenced on these syllabi for gender of authors as well as other characteristics. Less than 30% of the papers referenced on these syllabi were written by female first authors, with no evidence of a trend toward greater inclusion of papers published by female first authors since the 1980s. The difference in inclusion rates of female first-authored papers could not be explained by a preference for including classic over contemporary papers in syllabi (there was evidence of a recency bias instead) or the relative availability of female first-authored papers in the published literature. Implications are discussed.

Race, gender, and scholarly impact: Disparities for women and faculty of color in clinical psychology

OBJECTIVE

We sought to determine if gender and race are associated with scientific impact, scholarly productivity, career advancement, and prestige.

METHODS

Publicly available data on publications, h-index, advancement, and prestige were assessed across core faculty in all American Psychological Association-accredited clinical psychology programs at R1 institutions in the United States (87 programs, 918 scientists).

RESULTS

There were significant effects of both gender and race on productivity and impact, which were most apparent among the most senior faculty. Men and white faculty in associate and full professor ranks had higher scholarly productivity and impact. Among associate professors, men were more likely to get tenure earlier, even when controlling for scientific impact (h-index). Neither gender nor race was associated with prestige among full professors.

CONCLUSION

These findings, along with under-representation of non-White faculty across levels (11.2%) and women at the full professor level (42.8%), suggest disparities in academic clinical psychology that must be addressed.

The gender gap in commenting: Women are less likely than men to comment on (men's) published research

Subtle gender dynamics in the publishing process involving collaboration, peer-review, readership, citation, and media coverage disadvantage women in academia. In this study we consider whether commenting on published work is also gendered. Using all the comments published over a 16-year period in PNAS (N = 869) and Science (N = 481), we find that there is a gender gap in the authorship of comment letters: women are less likely than men to comment on published academic research. This disparity is greater than gender differences in the publication of research articles. There is also a gendered pattern in commenting: women comment writers are relatively less likely to engage with men's research. If left unaddressed, these patterns in academic commenting could impede scholarly exchange between men and women and further marginalize women within the scientific community.

Open Science Promotes Diverse, Just, and Sustainable Research and Educational Outcomes

Open science initiatives, which are often collaborative efforts focused on making research more transparent, have experienced increasing popularity in the past decade. Open science principles of openness and transparency provide opportunities to advance diversity, justice, and sustainability by promoting diverse, just, and sustainable outcomes among both undergraduate and senior researchers. We review models that demonstrate the importance of greater diversity, justice, and sustainability in psychological science before describing how open science initiatives promote these values. Open science initiatives also promote diversity, justice, and sustainability through increased levels of inclusion and access, equitable distribution of opportunities and dissemination of knowledge, and increased sustainability stemming from increased generalizability. In order to provide an application of the concepts discussed, we offer a set of diversity, justice, and sustainability lens questions for individuals to use while assessing research projects and other organizational systems and consider concrete classroom applications for these initiatives.

Gender in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics: Issues, Causes, Solutions

The landscape of gender in education and the workforce has shifted over the past decades: women have made gains in representation, equitable pay, and recognition through awards, grants, and publications. Despite overall change, differences persist in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). This Viewpoints article on gender disparities in STEM offers an overarching perspective by addressing what the issues are, why the issues may emerge, and how the issues may be solved. In Part 1, recent data on gaps in representation, compensation, and recognition (awards, grants, publications) are reviewed, highlighting differences across subfields (e.g., computer science vs biology) and across career trajectories (e.g., bachelor's degrees vs senior faculty). In Part 2, evidence on leading explanations for these gaps, including explanations centered on abilities, preferences, and explicit and implicit bias, is presented. Particular attention is paid to implicit bias: mental processes that exist largely outside of conscious awareness and control in both male and female perceivers and female targets themselves. Given its prevalence and persistence, implicit bias warrants a central focus for research and application. Finally, in Part 3, the current knowledge is presented on interventions to change individuals' beliefs and behaviors, as well as organizational culture and practices. The moral issues surrounding equal access aside, understanding and addressing the complex issues surrounding gender in STEM are important because of the possible benefits to STEM and society that will be realized only when full participation of all capable and qualified individuals is guaranteed.

Gender variations in citation distributions in medicine are very small and due to self-citation and journal prestige

A number of studies suggest that scientific papers with women in leading-author positions attract fewer citations than those with men in leading-author positions. We report the results of a matched case-control study of 1,269,542 papers in selected areas of medicine published between 2008 and 2014. We find that papers with female authors are, on average, cited between 6.5 and 12.6% less than papers with male authors. However, the standardized mean differences are very small, and the percentage overlaps between the distributions for male and female authors are extensive. Adjusting for self-citations, number of authors, international collaboration and journal prestige, we find near-identical per-paper citation impact for women and men in first and last author positions, with self-citations and journal prestige accounting for most of the small average differences. Our study demonstrates the importance of focusing greater attention on within-group variability and between-group overlap of distributions when interpreting and reporting results of gender-based comparisons of citation impact.

Exploring Research-Methods Blogs in Psychology: Who Posts What About Whom, and With What Effect?

During the methods crisis in psychology and other sciences, much discussion developed online in forums such as blogs and other social media. Hence, this increasingly popular channel of scientific discussion itself needs to be explored to inform current controversies, record the historical moment, improve methods communication, and address equity issues. Who posts what about whom, and with what effect? Does a particular generation or gender contribute more than another? Do blogs focus narrowly on methods, or do they cover a range of issues? How do they discuss individual researchers, and how do readers respond? What are some impacts? Web-scraping and text-analysis techniques provide a snapshot characterizing 41 current research-methods blogs in psychology. Bloggers mostly represented psychology's traditional leaderships' demographic categories: primarily male, mid- to late career, associated with American institutions, White, and with established citation counts. As methods blogs, their posts mainly concern statistics, replication (particularly statistical power), and research findings. The few posts that mentioned individual researchers substantially focused on replication issues; they received more views, social-media impact, comments, and citations. Male individual researchers were mentioned much more often than female researchers. Further data can inform perspectives about these new channels of scientific communication, with the shared aim of improving scientific practices.

How Do Men and Women Perceive a High-Stakes Test Situation?

The results of some high-stakes aptitude tests in Austria have revealed sex differences. We suggest that such discrepancies are mediated not principally by differences in aptitudes, skills, and knowledge but sex differences in test takers' perceptions of the test situation. Furthermore, previous research has indicated that candidates' evaluations of the fairness of the testing tool are of great importance from an institutional point of view because such perceptions are known to influence an organization's attractiveness. In this study, we aimed to investigate how women and men perceive and evaluate certain aspects of a high-stakes test situation by using the results and evaluations of an actual medical school aptitude test (747 applicants; 59% women). Test takers voluntarily evaluated the test situation and rated specific aspects of it (e.g., the fairness of the selection tool) and provided information regarding their test anxiety immediately after they completed the 4-h test. Data analyses indicated small, albeit significant sex differences in participants' perceptions of the test. Men described the test situation as slightly giving more opportunity to socialize and possessing more opportunity to deceive than women did. Furthermore, the perception of the test situation did not directly predict the test results, but it served as a moderator for the indirect effect of test anxiety on test results. By contrast, there were significant direct effects but no indirect effects of situation perception on evaluations of the fairness of the selection tool: The more the test situation was perceived as a high-pressure situation, the lower the fairness ratings of the testing tool. Results were discussed with reference to gender roles and test fairness.

Beyond Representation of Women in I-O to Producing Gender-Inclusive Knowledge

Gardner, Ryan, and Snoeyink (2018) provided an excellent and much-needed analysis of the status of women in industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology. Although others have produced overall assessments of the status of women in psychology (Eagly & Riger, 2014; Kite et al., 2001), these are not sufficient to identify conditions within the subfields of psychology. As shown by statistics on the divisions of the American Psychological Association (http://www.apa.org/about/division/officers/services/profiles.aspx), the subfields differ greatly in their gender balance, with some being male dominated (e.g., experimental and cognitive science), others female dominated (e.g., developmental psychology), and still others representing women and men more equally (e.g., social and personality psychology). I-O psychology is among the more gender-balanced fields, with an increasing proportion of women over time. It would seem that I-O's gradual inclusion of more women should have changed aspects of research and discourse in this field. In this comment, we argue that these women have produced impressive changes.

Can lifestyle preferences help explain the persistent gender gap in academia? The "mothers work less" hypothesis supported for German but not for U.S. early career researchers

Do lifestyle preferences contribute to the remaining gender gap in higher positions in academia with highly qualified women—especially those with children—deliberately working fewer hours than men do? We tested the “mothers work less” hypothesis in two samples of early career researchers employed at universities in Germany (N = 202) and in the US (N = 197). Early career researchers in the US worked on average 6.3 hours more per week than researchers in Germany. In Germany, female early career researchers with children had drastically reduced work hours (around 8 hours per week) compared to male researchers with children and compared to female researchers without children, whereas we found no such effect for U.S. researchers. In addition, we asked how long respondents would ideally want to work (ideal work hours), and results revealed similar effects for ideal work hours. Results support the “mothers work less” hypothesis for German but not for U.S. early career researchers.

Scholarly Merit in a Global Context: The Nation Gap in Psychological Science

Psychologists from the United States are extremely prominent in psychological science, publishing more articles and receiving more citations than researchers from other nations. In this brief article, I review some previous research on this "nation gap" in psychology and highlight relevant data from journals published by the Association for Psychological Science. I then discuss some possible explanations for the nation gap and touch on some of its implications for thinking about scholarly merit and scientific eminence. I hope that the research and data discussed here will stimulate further consideration of the role of author nationality for both judgments of scholarly merit and psychological science more generally.

Researchers of Color, Fame, and Impact

Fame and eminence, as traditionally measured, limit the definition of impact to the publication world. We add two types of impact to the traditional measures of fame and eminence. Many of the traditional measures of fame or eminence are based on social-network connections, whereby individuals appoint other people to positions of eminence. Editorial boards are one specific example. Eminence is also limited to number of publications, for example, with little regard for the impact of those publications at the societal level. In addition to the dominant measures of eminence, societal impact broadens the definition of impact to reflect real-world changes. Two examples include mentoring, which is rarely mentioned as a criterion for eminence, and policy value, such as when research influences important public policy. These additions are discussed in reference to the general underrepresentation of researchers of color in academia.

Afterword: In the Matter of Judging Scientific Merit

In this afterword, I suggest expanding upon some of the criteria for judging scientific merit that have been discussed in the two symposia on "judging scholarly merit in psychological science." I discuss in particular the value of creativity, analysis, common sense, and wisdom and ethics in scientific contributions and discourse. In the course of this discussion, I consider where the field of judging scientific merit has been, where it is now, and where it may go.

Are Twitter and Blogs Important Tools for the Modern Psychological Scientist?

Psychological scientists have many roles, one of which is, arguably, to communicate their research findings to a broader audience. Twitter and blogging offer relatively inexpensive options for this type of outreach. Engagement in these outreach efforts can lead to career enhancement, but also comes at a cost. We examined a sample of 327 psychological scientists to determine the prevalence of this type of outreach; while the use of Twitter appears to be on the rise, blogging remains very rare. In this piece, we explore the costs and benefits for psychological scientists of blogging and engaging with the general public on Twitter, and how tweeting and blogging might relate to academic merit and varieties of fame in psychology.

Eminence and Omniscience: Statistical and Clinical Prediction of Merit

In this article, I review, comment upon, and assess some of the suggestions for evaluating scientific merit as suggested by contributors to this symposium. I ask the reader to take the perspective of the individual who has the final say in making a tenure, promotion, or hiring decision. I also ask that one imagine the difference between the fallible human state we are in on such an occasion and what it would be like to be omniscient when making such decisions. After adopting the terminology of "deep" and "surface" eminence, I consider what an omniscient being would take into account to determine eminence and to guide decision-making. After discussing how some proposed improvements in assessing merit might move us closer to wise decisions, I conclude by noting that both data and judgment are, and will continue to be, necessary. A clerk cannot determine eminence.

Taking Advantage of Citation Measures of Scholarly Impact

Professional decisions about hiring, tenure, promotion, funding, and honors are informed by assessments of scholarly impact. As a measure of influence, citations are produced by experts but accessible to nonexperts. The h index is the largest number h such that an individual has published at least h works cited at least h times apiece. This is easy to understand and calculate, as or more reliable and valid than alternative citation measures, and highly robust to missing or messy data. Striving for a large h index requires both productivity and influence, which provides healthy incentives for researchers striving for eminence through scientific impact. A number of factors that can influence h are discussed to promote the mindful use of what might otherwise be an ambiguous or misleading measure. The h index adds a transparent, objective component to assessments of scholarly impact, and even academic eminence, that merits at least two cheers.