Women rival men in scientific research publications and citations

Study finds that shorter careers explain gender differences in scientific productivity and impact

Article published March 2020 at Nature Index

Despite increasing representation of women in science, gender gaps for publications and citations have continued to widen since the middle of last century.

A new study has found an explanation: women are more prone than men to dropping out of science, thereby curtailing their publishing careers. That gap is also growing.

When differences in career length are controlled for, male and female scientists have similar rates of publication and citation, researchers at the Centre for Complex Network Research at Northeastern University, Boston, have found.

Study co-author Roberta Sinatra, a data scientist at IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark, argues that the results help to dispel the myth that women are “less good” than men at science.

“If here we interpret ‘good’ in terms of productivity and/or citations, we see that women are pretty similar to men, as long as they stay in the system and do not drop out,” she says.

Continue reading at Nature Index