The lack of females in many Science Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) subjects in the USA is an ongoing concern, with many initiatives attempting to redress this imbalance. Some life sciences are apparently areas of relatively good practice, with higher proportions of female researchers than most other STEM subjects. This paper assesses gender differences in research contributions to 14 biochemistry, genetics or molecular biology specialisms in the USA 1996–2014/8, seeking evidence of trends in publishing and citation impact that may give insights into female success. With four exceptions (biochemistry, biophysics, biotechnology, and structural biology), the fields achieved or maintained at least 40% female first authors by 2018, with developmental biology and endocrinology both attaining female first author majorities. A regression analysis found close to gender parity overall in citation impact but a small male first author citation advantage in more fields than the opposite: an up to 3% increase in logged citation ratio to the world mean. This was partly due to males first authoring with larger teams. Fields with relatively many females did not favour female-led research with more citations, however.

The evaluation of research outputs in the form of journal articles is important to help with monitoring performance and to allocate funds. Elsevier’s Scopus and Clarivate’s Web of Science (WoS) are the two main sources for identifying outputs. For non-English-speaking countries, it is especially important that most of the scientific activity evaluated is represented in the bibliometric database used. All documents published in Scopus and WoS during 2018 (6,094,079 documents) were therefore analysed and compared for their languages and research areas. The most comprehensive source for each language and research area were identified and some coverage problems have been found.

Academic psychology in the USA is a gender success story in terms of overturning its early male dominance but there are still relatively few senior female psychology researchers. To assess whether there are gender differences in citation impact that might help to explain either of these trends, this study investigates psychology articles since 1996. Seven out of eight Scopus psychology categories had a majority of female first-authored journal articles by 2018. From regression analyses of first and last author gender and team size, female first authors associate with a slightly higher average citation impact, but extra authors have a ten times stronger association with higher average citation impact. Last author gender has little association with citation impact. Female first authors are more likely to be in larger teams and if team size is attributed to the first author’s work, then their apparent influence of female first authors on citation impact doubles. Whilst gender differences in average citation impact are too small to account for gender-related trends in academic psychology, they warn that male dominated citation-based ranking lists of psychologists do not reflect the state of psychology research today.