What is it about?
Researchers examined gender-based differences in the structure of citation networks of 766 researchers—120 of whom were women—elected to the US National Academy of Sciences and working in the disciplines of astronomy, physics, chemistry, computer and information sciences, psychological and cognitive sciences, social and political sciences, and economic sciences. Compared with men, women had fewer lifetime citations, were more likely to reciprocate citations, had more productive peers, and were more likely to have female peers. The disparities were sufficient to correctly classify the gender of an author based on the structure of their citation network, suggesting that gender continues to influence career success in science, according to the authors.
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Why is it important?
Science is believed to be a meritocracy, where a scientist's gender does not affect the recognition of his or her work. Our paper shows that this is not true: even among the most distinguished scholars who were elected to the National Academy of Sciences, gender impacts the scientific recognition (through citations) their work receives.
Perspectives
To unleash the talent potential of our scientific workforce requires overcoming gender (and other demographic) biases. Understanding how sexism affects science is an important step towards mitigating its harms.
Kristina Lerman
University of Southern California
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Gendered citation patterns among the scientific elite, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, September 2022, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2206070119.
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