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Small female citation advantages for US journal articles in medicine
Maflahi, Nabeil
Maflahi, Nabeil
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2022-02-16
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Abstract
Female underrepresentation continues in senior roles within academic medicine, potentially influenced by a perception that female research has less citation impact. This article provides systematic evidence of (a) female participation rates from the perspective of published journal articles in 46 Scopus medical subject categories 1996-2018 and (b) gender differences in citation rates 1996-2014. The results show female proportion increases 1996-2018 in all fields and a female majority of first authored articles in two fifths of categories, but substantial differences between fields: A paper is 7.3 times more likely to have a female first author in Obstetrics and Gynecology than in Orthopedics and Sports Medicine. Only three fields had a female last author majority by 2018, a probable side effect of ongoing problems with appointing female leaders. Female first-authored research tended to be more cited than male first-authored research in most fields (59%), although with a maximum difference of only 5.1% (log-transformed normalised citations). In contrast, male last-authored research tends to be more cited than female last-authored research, perhaps due to cases where a senior male has attracted substantial funding for a project. These differences increase if team sizes are not accounted for in the calculations. Since female first-authored research is cited slightly more than male first-authored research, properly analysed bibliometric data considering career gaps should not disadvantage female candidates for senior roles.
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Thelwall, M. and Maflahi, N. (2022) Small female citation advantages for US journal articles in medicine. Journal of Information Science, 48(1), pp. 106-117.
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Journal article
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en
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This is an accepted manuscript of an article published by SAGE in Journal of Information Science on 16/02/2022, available online at: https://doi.org/10.1177/0165551520942729
The accepted version of the publication may differ from the final published version.
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0165-5515