Age, Gender, and International Author Networks in the Earth and Space Sciences: Implications for Addressing Implicit Bias

Abstract

Author networks play a key role in doing science. Developing networks is critical for career advancement in a variety of ways, and differences in networks may be a core reason for persistence of implicit bias, particularly with regards to gender. Combining the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting abstracts from 2014-2018 with self-identified AGU member data on birth year and gender provides a large database of more than 400,000 unique coauthor interactions that we use to examine author networks by age, gender, and country. Age data are necessary to disambiguate the effect of a historic lack of women in the Earth and Space Science. The data show that women's networks are closer to those expected from the age-gender distribution of the overall membership; whereas, networks of men include more men than expected. Women also have more male coauthors within their age cohort than expected from the membership distribution. Women's networks are also less international than their male colleagues in most age cohorts. These differences start in the youngest age cohort. These data indicate that addressing implicit bias requires efforts at purposefully encouraging and developing more balanced author networks, particularly in early-career scientists. Recent work suggests that this will also improve science outputs.Plain Language Summary Today, most research is conducted in teams, which allows different techniques and expertise to be applied to a scientific investigation. It also allows for sharing skills among team members, which especially benefits students. The size of these research teams, which translates to co-authorship of conference presentations and manuscripts, has been growing and increasingly involves members from multiple countries. Professional connections made through teams are also important for career advancement. In this paper, we examine the age, gender, and extent of international collaborations of scientists by looking at authors of meeting presentations of one of the largest scientific meetings in the world, AGU's annual Fall Meeting. We found that male scientists tended to have a higher proportion of male co-authors than would be expected at random and more international collaborations than women. These differences were apparent across most age groups, notably including authors in their twenties. This implies that actions are needed to help students of both genders equitably develop and expand their networks.

Association Between Author Diversity and Acceptance Rates and Citations in Peer‐Reviewed Earth Science Manuscripts

“…A related study by Hanson et al (2020) shows that there are network differences across gender, national, and age‐related demographic groups and that women have smaller and less international networks than men in the same age cohorts. This might reveal why mixed‐gender collaborations do not necessarily result in higher citations than single‐author or single‐gender teams.…”

“…The next highest populations represented in this demographically matched dataset are China, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Canada, which make up cumulatively 1.1%. Further information on international collaborations are provided in a companion paper looking at the larger AGU Fall Meeting data set (Hanson et al, 2020). Although many of the overall international distributions are similar, the AGU Meeting attracts more authors and researchers from the United States and thus has proportionally fewer international authors and collaborations.…”

Association between Author Diversity and Acceptance Rates and Citations in Peer-reviewed Earth Science Manuscripts

“…A related study by Hanson et al (2020) shows that there are network differences across gender, national, and age-related demographic groups and that women have smaller and less international networks than men in the same age cohorts. This might reveal why mixed-gender collaborations do not necessarily result in higher citations than single-author or single-gender teams.…”

“…The next highest populations represented in this demographically matched dataset are China, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Canada, which make up cumulatively 1.1%. Further information on international collaborations are provided in a companion paper looking at the larger AGU Fall Meeting data set (Hanson et al, 2020). Although many of the overall international distributions are similar, the AGU Meeting attracts more authors and researchers from the United States and thus has proportionally fewer international authors and collaborations.…”

Diversity Among Editorial Boards of Elements and Other Selected Geochemistry, Cosmochemistry, Mineralogy and Petrology Journals

“…The members of editorial boards shape the direction and success of a journal, and they influence the authorship of papers and what is published within the journal. Differences in scientific networks may be a core reason for the persistence of implicit bias from editorial boards, particularly with regard to gender (Hanson et al 2020). Therefore, editorial bias, or perceived editorial bias, can exclude certain groups and exacerbate his torical inequities regarding underrepresentation of entire continents within the geoscience literature (e.g., Africa, see North et al 2020).…”