Authorship and citation gender trends in immunology and microbiology
Abstract
Immunology and microbiology research are essential for human and animal health. Unlike many other health fields, they do not usually centre around the curing or helping individual patients but focus on the microscopic scale instead. These fields are interesting from a gender perspective because two theories seeking to explain gender differences in career choices in the USA (people/things and communal/agentic goals) might produce conflicting expectations about their gender balances. This article assesses the gender shares of journal articles and gendered citation rates of five subfields of the Scopus Immunology and Microbiology broad category 1996-2014/18, for research with solely US author affiliations. Only Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology (38% female) had not reached gender parity in publishing by 2018. There was a female first author citation advantage in Parasitology but a disadvantage in Immunology. Immunology, Parasitology and Virology, had female last author citation disadvantages, but all gender effects were much smaller (<5%) than that of an extra author (10%-56%). Citation differences cannot therefore account for the current underrepresentation of women in senior roles.Citation
Thelwall, M. (2020) Authorship and citation gender trends in immunology and microbiology, FEMS Microbiology Letters, 367 (2), fnaa021, https://doi.org/10.1093/femsle/fnaa021Publisher
Oxford University PressJournal
FEMS Microbiology LettersAdditional Links
https://academic.oup.com/femsle/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/femsle/fnaa021/5728488?redirectedFrom=fulltextType
Journal articleLanguage
enDescription
This is an accepted manuscript of an article published by Oxford University Press in FEMS Microbiology Letters on 06/02/2020, available online: https://academic.oup.com/femsle/article/367/2/fnaa021/5728488 The accepted version of the publication may differ from the final published version.ISSN
0378-1097ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1093/femsle/fnaa021
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/