New studies show women researchers receive less recognition through scientific article citations. Photo courtesy of Flickr via Argonne National Laboratory.
By Shira Sadeh ’25
Science & Environment Editor
A study published on Oct. 6, 2022, in Nature Physics demonstrated a pattern of under-representation of scientific works authored by women in physics articles citations. The study revealed that the bias towards citing research authored by men primarily occurs among male writers and researchers, as well as when the citing author has less familiarity with the subject they are writing about. “When you’re in a place of uncertainty, you want to choose something that has all the status symbols associated with quality, for right or wrong,” Cassidy Sugimoto, professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology School of Public Policy, said to Science magazine on the issue. “You are going to overselect men and underselect women who may have similar quality [of work] but not necessarily be associated with those status symbols,” she continued.
The results of this study were further supported by a study published by Springer Nature on Oct. 13, 2022. This study approached the issue from what they defined as a “first-mover advantage” viewpoint, arguing that those who are the first to publish work on a topic tend to be cited more than those who come after them. The researchers performed a “paper-matching analysis” that compared papers that had similar bibliographies. They found that women’s papers tend to have lower overall visibility, and that authors who published earlier had more citations. They attributed these two findings to men’s longer “cumulative” history of published work and women’s shorter history of visible participation in physics research, resulting in men’s work obtaining more visibility — and by extension, citations — among physics research.
To explore how citation practices differ based on gender, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences conducted a study of “prominent scholars who were elected to the National Academy of Sciences” in August of 2022. According to its website, the National Academy of Sciences is a nonprofit organization made up of elected leaders that aims to recognize the work of scientific scholars through awards and publications in its journal. The study found differences in citation structures strong enough to make it possible to predict the author’s gender based on their references page, meaning that the network of written works referenced by authors differs among male and female researchers. The study found that while men have a wider “net” of cited works, women have a higher density of mutually cited works.
The study further explains that men tend to cite a broader variety of sources, most of which are authored by other men, while women tend to cite within a smaller, interconnected collection of works. The sources cited by women are often created by the research community that they are embedded in, which tend to be smaller than men’s but more prolific in their relative number of publications. Overall, the study found that male researchers make an average of almost 1,400 more citations than women in their lifetime due to their affinity for a wider net of citations.
The Springer Nature study went on to highlight barriers to women’s success in the world of scientific research. In addition to the first-mover advantage, women often face disadvantages in both academic and professional settings, the article said. For example, underrepresentation in academic settings can create a higher dropout rate for women, and unequal expectations of familial commitments can affect academic and professional success.
According to a Science article on the issue of women’s dropout rates in science, technology, engineering and math related academic programs, there are multiple factors that contribute to this issue. One factor, the article explains, is the ways in which science is taught, and how it often excludes women’s perspectives. The article argues that science curriculums often use “outmoded stereotypes, an emphasis on scientific knowledge independent of real-world uses and an image of scientists as obsessed with science to the exclusion of other human endeavors.” This argument, when combined with studies that show that men often prioritize “abstractions and theories” while women tend to prioritize “social values,” explain why women often lose interest in science-related classes, the article explained. While these studies serve as generalizations, even critics of these theories agree that there is a pattern of women studying subjects that connect directly with people rather than abstractions, the article said. Furthermore, the article explains that within the sciences, women more often choose to study biology, medicine or psychology, which are considered more people-centered sciences, while men more often choose to study inorganic sciences like physics or engineering.
Other arguments for why women are underrepresented in STEM-related academic fields describe how representation can affect women’s self-perception. For example, an article published by the American Psychological Association describes the results of three studies that measured the impact of same-sex representation for women in STEM. All three studies found that having contact with experts of the same sex — advanced peers, professionals and professors) — “enhances women’s self-concept in STEM, attitudes toward STEM and motivation to pursue STEM careers.”
According to the United States Census Bureau, women made up 27 percent of the STEM workforce in 2019, despite accounting for 48 percent of the overall workforce. According to the PNAS study, the failure to give women authors adequate recognition through citations results in a deficit of women in high authority positions, which in turn means that aspiring women in STEM have fewer role models that can encourage their participation. For example, the study cited that female physics professors in four-year colleges and universities represent 23 percent of assistant professors, 18 percent of associate professors and only 10 percent of full professors. The study explains that these barriers to academic and professional success not only limit individual women, but also hinder gender diversification within STEM fields as a whole.