IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0183301.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Vicious circles of gender bias, lower positions, and lower performance: Gender differences in scholarly productivity and impact

Author

Listed:
  • Peter van den Besselaar
  • Ulf Sandström

Abstract

It is often argued that female researchers publish on average less than male researchers do, but male and female authored papers have an equal impact. In this paper we try to better understand this phenomenon by (i) comparing the share of male and female researchers within different productivity classes, and (ii) by comparing productivity whereas controlling for a series of relevant covariates. The study is based on a disambiguated Swedish author dataset, consisting of 47,000 researchers and their WoS-publications during the period of 2008-2011 with citations until 2015. As the analysis shows, in order to have impact quantity does make a difference for male and female researchers alike—but women are vastly underrepresented in the group of most productive researchers. We discuss and test several possible explanations of this finding, using a data on personal characteristics from several Swedish universities. Gender differences in age, authorship position, and academic rank do explain quite a part of the productivity differences.

Suggested Citation

  • Peter van den Besselaar & Ulf Sandström, 2017. "Vicious circles of gender bias, lower positions, and lower performance: Gender differences in scholarly productivity and impact," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(8), pages 1-16, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0183301
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0183301
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0183301
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0183301&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0183301?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Bradford Barham & Jeremy Foltz & Ana Paula Melo, 2020. "Academic Engagement, Commercialization, and Scholarship: Empirical Evidence from Agricultural and Life Scientists at US Land Grant Universities," NBER Chapters, in: Economics of Research and Innovation in Agriculture, pages 179-208, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. González-Betancor, Sara M. & Dorta-González, Pablo, 2023. "Does society show differential attention to researchers based on gender and field?," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 17(4).
    3. Thelwall, Mike, 2018. "Do females create higher impact research? Scopus citations and Mendeley readers for articles from five countries," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 12(4), pages 1031-1041.
    4. Abramo, Giovanni & D'Angelo, CiriacoAndrea & Di Costa, Flavia, 2024. "The moderating role of personal characteristics of authors in the publications’ quality for quantity trade-off," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 18(1).
    5. Lawson, Cornelia & Geuna, Aldo & Finardi, Ugo, 2021. "The funding-productivity-gender nexus in science, a multistage analysis," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 50(3).
    6. Zhang, Mengya & Zhang, Gupeng & Liu, Yun & Zhai, Xiaorong & Han, Xinying, 2020. "Scientists’ genders and international academic collaboration: An empirical study of Chinese universities and research institutes," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 14(4).
    7. Lin Zhang & Yuanyuan Shang & Ying Huang & Gunnar Sivertsen, 2022. "Gender differences among active reviewers: an investigation based on publons," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(1), pages 145-179, January.
    8. Jamal El-Ouahi & Vincent Larivière, 2023. "On the lack of women researchers in the Middle East and North Africa," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(8), pages 4321-4348, August.
    9. Zhang, Lin & Shang, Yuanyuan & HUANG, Ying & Sivertsen, Gunnar, 2021. "Gender differences among active reviewers: an investigation based on Publons," SocArXiv 4z6w8, Center for Open Science.
    10. Ho Fai Chan & Benno Torgler, 2020. "Gender differences in performance of top cited scientists by field and country," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(3), pages 2421-2447, December.
    11. Mike Thelwall, 2020. "Female citation impact superiority 1996–2018 in six out of seven English‐speaking nations," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 71(8), pages 979-990, August.
    12. Marina Pilkina & Andrey Lovakov, 2022. "Gender disparities in Russian academia: a bibliometric analysis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(6), pages 3577-3591, June.
    13. Monika Sieverding & Constanze Eib & Andreas B Neubauer & Thomas Stahl, 2018. "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," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(8), pages 1-18, August.
    14. Xiang Zheng & Jiajing Chen & Erjia Yan & Chaoqun Ni, 2023. "Gender and country biases in Wikipedia citations to scholarly publications," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 74(2), pages 219-233, February.
    15. Sánchez-Jiménez, Rodrigo & Guerrero-Castillo, Pablo & Guerrero-Bote, Vicente P. & Halevi, Gali & De-Moya-Anegón, Félix, 2024. "Analysis of the distribution of authorship by gender in scientific output: A global perspective," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 18(3).
    16. Auschra, Carolin & Bartosch, Julia & Lohmeyer, Nora, 2022. "Differences in female representation in leading management and organization journals: Establishing a benchmark," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 51(3).
    17. Ana Jesús López & Dolores Pereira, 2021. "The Value of Transfer of Knowledge in Bridging the Gender Gap in STEM," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(10), pages 1-15, May.
    18. Roberta Ruggieri & Fabrizio Pecoraro & Daniela Luzi, 2021. "An intersectional approach to analyse gender productivity and open access: a bibliometric analysis of the Italian National Research Council," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(2), pages 1647-1673, February.
    19. Gita Ghiasi & Catherine Beaudry & Vincent Larivière & Carl St-Pierre & Andrea Schiffauerova & Matthew Harsh, 2021. "Who profits from the Canadian nanotechnology reward system? Implications for gender-responsible innovation," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(9), pages 7937-7991, September.
    20. Marek Kwiek & Wojciech Roszka, 2022. "Are female scientists less inclined to publish alone? The gender solo research gap," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(4), pages 1697-1735, April.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0183301. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.