Gender gaps in Australian research publishing, citation and co-authorship

Abstract

Despite improvement in gender inequality in Australian science, the problem has not been fully addressed yet. To better understand the nature of gender inequality in Australian science, all gendered Australian first authored articles published between 2010 and 2020 and indexed in the Dimensions database were analysed. Field of Research (FoR) was used as the subject classification of articles and Field Citation Ratio (FCR) was used for citation comparison. Overall, the ratio of female to male first authored articles increased over the years, and this was true for all FoRs except for information and computing sciences. The ratio of single-authored articles by females was also improved over the study period. Females appeared to have a citation advantage, using Field Citation Ratio, over males in a few FoRs including mathematical sciences, chemical sciences, technology, built environment and design, studies in human society, law and legal studies, and studies in creative arts and writing. The average FCR for female first authored articles was greater than the average FCR for male first authored articles, including in a few fields such mathematical sciences where male authors outperformed females in terms of the number of articles.

Research Brief: Grant Leadership is Key to Gender Equity

“…As research becomes increasingly collaborative 11 , patterns of research collaboration within grant programs according to gender -specifically, working in teams versus working alone -remain an area requiring investigation. However, studies on academic journal authorship reveal that women publish more co-authored than soleauthored articles compared to men 12,13 , though this disparity varies across research fields 13 . iv In relation to existing research findings, we use the term 'women' for findings about female or women researchers and 'men' for findings about male or men researchers, in line with the language used in the reporting of that research.…”