Author gender differences in psychology citation impact 1996-2018
Abstract
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.Citation
Thelwall, M. (2020) Author gender differences in psychology citation impact 1996-2018, International Journal of Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1002/ijop.12633Publisher
WileyJournal
International Journal of PsychologyAdditional Links
https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/pijp20/currentType
Journal articleLanguage
enISSN
0020-7594ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1002/ijop.12633
Scopus Count
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Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/