Are Women Properly Represented in Scientific Publication and Research? Interim Results from a Spanish Case Study in Earth Sciences

Pereira, Dolores and Diaz, Capitolina Are Women Properly Represented in Scientific Publication and Research? Interim Results from a Spanish Case Study in Earth Sciences. Episodes: Journal of International Geoscience, 2016, vol. 39, n. 1, pp. 52-58. [Journal article (Paginated)]

[img] Text (English text)
2_89237-166662-1-PB.pdf - Published version
Download (478kB)

English abstract

In 2015 there still are gender disparities in Science. These are reflected in different aspects of science such as the comparatively few major research projects led by women and relatively low numbers of women as authors in major publications (even fewer as first or last author). Much work has been published on this issue, concluding that only around 30% of science authors are women, and although more research is needed, it is clear that the pipeline from junior to senior positions leaks female scientists. Most decision boards have an exclusive male composition and there is a need to study whether this affects the result of any selection based on the peer-review process. The unbalanced composition includes editorial boards of major journals. This article investigates this and other unbalanced situations to understand the extent to which citation and publication patterns differ between men and women in science in general and in earth sciences in particular, and the negative impacts of some widely used indices that can bias the research output from a gender perspective. We conclude that men are more published and more cited than women due to a number of factors, from the lack of awareness of the value of gender equity to the overwhelming masculine presence on editorial boards and manuscript reviewers and to an overall weak network of female scientists.

Item type: Journal article (Paginated)
Keywords: Women's Studies, Scientific Research
Subjects: B. Information use and sociology of information > BB. Bibliometric methods
Depositing user: Carlos G. Figuerola
Date deposited: 29 May 2016 09:10
Last modified: 29 May 2016 09:10
URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10760/29314

References

Alonso-Zarza, A. M., Álvarez-Marrón, J., Calonge, A., Díaz, C., Díez Balda, M.A., Gil Peña, I., and Gómez, M.I. 2008. Mujeres y Geología en España. Geotemas, v. 10, pp. 589.

Anderson Eloy, J., Svider, P., Chandrasekhar, S.S., Husain, Q., Mauro, K.M., Setzen, M., and Baredes, S. 2013. Gender Disparities in Scholarly Productivity within Academic Otolaryngology Departments. Otolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery v. 148(2), pp. 215–222.

Arenzon, J.J., Duarte, P., Cavalcanti, S. and Barbosa, M.C. 2013. Women and physics in Brazil: Publications, citations and H-index, AIP Conf. Proc. 1517, 78. Available on line at http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4794228

Bar-Ilan, J. 2008. Which h-index? A comparison of WoS, Scopus and Google Scholar, Scientometrics, v. 74(2), pp. 257-271.

Birks, Y., Fairhurst, C., Baird, W., Bloor, K.E., Campbell, M.K. and Torgerson, D.J. 2014. The use of the h-index to measure quality and output: A bibliometric analysis in health service research. Journal of Health Services Research & Policy, v. 19(2), pp. 102-109.

Boletín Oficial del Estado, Ley Orgánica 3/2007 para la igualdad efectiva de mujeres y hombres. BOE-A-2007-6115, 2007, 59 pp.

MacPherson, A. 2015. Médicas de base, médicos al mando. Retrieved from http://www.lavanguardia.com/20150119/54423497784/

El-Hinnawi, E. 2015. Earth and Planetary Scientific Research in the World, Episodes March 2015, pp. 54-56.

European Commission 2013. She Figures 2012. Gender in Research and Innovation. Statistics and Indicators, Luxembourg.

Gonzales, L. 2010. Participation of women in geoscience occupations. Geoscience Currents, v. 33.

Harzing, A. W. 2008. Google Scholar - a new data source for citation analysis. Research in International Management. Retrieved from http://www.harzing.com/pop_gs.htm

Hirsch J. E. 2005. An index to quantify an individual’s scientific research output. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, v. 102(46), pp. 16569-16572.

Jagsi, R, Guancial, E.A., Cooper Worobey, C., Henault, L.E., Chang, Y., Starr, R., Tarbell, N.J., and Hylek, E.M. 2006. The “gender gap” in authorship of medical literature. The New England Journal of Medicine v. 355, pp. 281-287.

Lane , J. A. and Linden, D. J. 2009. Is There Gender Bias in the Peer Review Process at Journal of Neurophysiology? Journal of Neurophysiology, v. 101(5), pp. 2195-2196.

Leydesdorff, L. 2008. Caveats for the Use of Citation Indicators in Research and Journal Evaluations.Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, v. 59(2), pp. 278-287.

Maliniak, D., Powers, R. and Walter, B.F. (2013) The Gender Citation Gap in International Relations International Organization, v. 67(4), pp. 889-922. McCook, A. 2013. Barred from the boardroom. Nature v. 495, pp. 25-27.

Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad 2014. Científicas en cifras 2013.Estadística e indicadores de la (des)igualdad de género en la formación y profesión investigadora.

Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte 2014. Datos y Cifras del Sistema Universitario Español.

Pashkova AA, Svider PF, Chang CY, Diaz L, Eloy JA, and Eloy JD. 2013. Gender disparity among US anaesthesiologists: are women under represented in academic ranks and scholarly productivity? Acta Anaesthesiol. Scand. v. 57(8), pp. 1058-64.

Pereira, D. 2014. Improving Female Participation in Professional Engineering Geology to Bring New Perspectives to Ethics in the Geosciences. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2014, v. 11(9), pp. 9429-9445.

Symonds, M.R.E., Gemmell, N.J., Braisher, T.L., Gorringe, K.L., and Elgar, M.A. 2006. Gender Differences in Publication Output: Towards an Unbiased Metric of Research Performance. PLoS ONE 1(1): e127. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0000127

Vernos, I. 2013. Quotas are questionable, Nature v. 495, pp. 39.


Downloads

Downloads per month over past year

Actions (login required)

View Item View Item
Altmetric
Contact us
Send email Sponsors
Sponsor: AIMS Sponsor: D&P Sponsor: UniNa CAB Get connected
Facebook Facebook Twitter Twitter Linkedin LinkedIn RSS RSS