The publication and citation gender gap in Biology: bibliometric analysis of Biology faculty at top United States universities

Abstract

Women are underrepresented in academia, especially in top research institutions, STEM departments, and senior positions. A number of studies have shown that, on average, female academics publish fewer articles per year, are less cited, and are promoted more slowly than their male peers. Other studies, however, have found that these gender differences are absent or even reversed in certain fields and social contexts, highlighting the importance of evaluating the different dimensions of the gender gap separately within each field and context. We obtained a census of 2104 female and 3721 male tenured and tenure-eligible faculty members affiliated with Biology Departments at the 146 United States R1 universities. We show that women represent 46.94% of Assistant Professors, 38.51% of Associate Professors and 30.09% of Professors in our dataset. Compared with their male peers, female faculty members tend to produce fewer publications per year (even after controlling for career stage and university ranking), to publish in lower-impact factor journals, and to be less cited (even after controlling for career length, career stage, number of publications, average impact factor of the journals in which they publish, and university ranking). Despite their lower publication and citation rates, female faculty members in our dataset require the same amount of time to attain the rank of Professor as their male peers.