Study: Women's scientific work is cited less than men's. Conclusion: Patriarchy. Problem: Citation gap persists in last name only journals. Unmentionable: Female authors get E-Z mode review and low quality work is cited less.

Mitschu · 2013-10-16T17:41:10+00:00

This should come as no surprise to many women in higher education who have long suspected that the road to success was harder for them than their male counterparts.

This should come as no surprise to many people that those professionals in charge of gathering feminist research statistics have no idea how to identify or even recognize confirmation bias.

Let me guess, when they asked men, they countersaid that the road to success was harder for men than it was for women, but that was discounted as patriarchal beardtears, since it's obviously bias, unlike asking a bunch of women if they think being a woman, the only thing they've ever known (with a few exceptions) is harder than being a man in the same field?

miroku000 · 2013-10-16T22:14:13+00:00

[permanently deleted]

actanonverba8 · 2013-10-16T19:05:18+00:00

Women nurses are quoted more in healthcare journals than male nurses. Is it the Matriarchy? Or, is it maybe that, historically and currently, more women have been nurses?

TracyMorganFreeman · 2013-10-17T00:39:19+00:00

They should really make journalists read the sources before reporting. I don't mind the encouragement of anonymity in research, as more is always better, but the misrepresented the article imo. From the original source:

"If departments are increasingly relying on citation counts to measure impact, then at the very least they should know whether any systematic bias exists in such counts. Work in a number of other scholarly fields shows a consistent trend in gendercitation patterns between men and women In biology, biochemistry, ecology, library and information science, and in general studies of the natural sciences, men tend to be more productive in terms of quantity, while women tend to produce higher-quality work, at least as measured by citations.

This is saying the opposite trend is true in citation number in studies in other fields. If this work exposes anti-female sexism, it is only sexism in the international relations field.

It also says "They find that articles published by men are less likely to cite work by women than are articles published by women [in other fields]" This could as easily expose sexism by women not citing men, as by men not citing women.

My main problem as an academic with this piece is that the quality of the work (since it looks at citations that an article than a man or woman published) is typically decide by 1) the number of citations, and 2) the venue it was published.

They can't use the primary test for quality to control, because that is what they are testing. That leaves only the journal that published it. The impact of articles in journals varies widely despite the impact factor, and therefore this really isn't a very good control.

In summary: Work to find sexism based on individual papers will be highly speculative because one of the most important factors (quality of the paper) is difficult to control. Therefore differences in citation number that have been observed to favor women in some cases, men in others, and neither in others will not be able to find a cause for the disparity (or lack of).

Aside: The OS concludes that differences in self-promotion are the main factor, and that men are more likely to self-promote. This may be true. This isn't a reason to treat men and women differently. It's a reason to reduce the benefits of self-promotion in the sciences. It is important that scientists remain skeptical, so a system that runs counter to that is counterproductive.

Here's the OS for all who can access it: http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=8990966&fulltextType=RA&fileId=S0020818313000209

TracyMorganFreeman · 2013-10-16T20:43:06+00:00

And what if we extended this to the classroom where student work was identified only by a number?

Boys would recieve higher grades if we did this, actually, so it sounds good to me!

Gallifreyan_Type_40 · 2013-10-16T19:13:16+00:00

There are a lot of measures against discrimination in the research field. For example, when you cite other researchers or yourself, you have to to cite with the first initial of your first name and full last name (Example: F. Last; J. Doe; J. Smith). This is required specifically to avoid gender discrimination in review boards.

If women are being cited less often, it's probably because there are simply less female researchers.

MYGODWHATHAVEIDONE · 2013-10-17T06:00:42+00:00

What if the norm for scholars was to identify themselves only with their first initial and last name when submitting an article for review and publication? This would make it more likely that initial impressions about the quality of scholarship were based on the work itself and not the author’s gender. This already occurs in some journals in the sciences, where - it turns out - the citation gap appears to be less prominent [gated].

First, when submitting a manuscript for peer review, I've never seen one that allows the submitter to have their name attached to it. Every peer review submission I've used required an identification-free copy that could be sent to the reviewers.

Second, since I'm on a university network, I have access to the gated article the author linked. I read the paper he cites, but the claim he's using the paper to support appears nowhere in the text. The only part of the paper that deals with citations says:

However, we found some indirect factual evidence that women scientists may tend to publish articles that contain more substantial or comprehensive work. In a small study using a subsample of 25 former NSF fellows in biology who are now academic scientists, we examined (among other inquiries) the citations in the scientific literature to these biologists' articles. The articles written by women in this small sample received significantly more citations per article, on average, than did men's articles, 24.4 vs. 14.4 citations (Sonnert 1995). This greater citation impact might indicate that the content of the women's articles, on the whole, was more noteworthy. We cannot place a great deal of confidence in this statement, given the small sample size.

This doesn't support his claim that last-name-only submissions would eliminate bias from peer review, and it undermines his argument that women are cited less than men.

tallwheel · 2013-10-17T01:31:15+00:00

This must be caused by anti-female bias and bias alone. There is no other possible explanation. /s

NUMBERS2357 · 2013-10-16T23:09:42+00:00

If female authors get EZ mode review, then why would eliminating the first name and replacing it with first initial partially narrow the gap?

ZimbaZumba · 2013-10-17T00:07:18+00:00

Another paper to confirm my hypothesis that Academia is in crisis.

IdleGod · 2013-10-16T20:49:17+00:00

I was thinking that, perhaps, its because there are quotas for women, but that's generally not the case; women have a much easier time in school, and do better in grade school education than boys do.

Now, that being said, there is research stating that there is a bias on research reviews because of names. Put a female name on the same paper, and there is a statistical difference in the review. I haven't seen that research replicated, and the sample sizes were small, so that's more likely an artifact.

The citation research can be retrospective, so it has more weight to it. It's possible that they get an "E-Z mode review". However, when digging up old research, often times researchers must reach out to whom they are citing for some data, often the raw data, in order to help them develop their hypothesis. So, that's a point in favor of the hypothesis that women get it worse than men, even when their name is masked.

Bottom line is we just don't know why this gap exists. It's worthwhile to strike first names from the research, not just for gendered reasons, but for culture and racials reasons as well (huh! those american's don't know what they're doing! or Stupid chinese... etc...). It's an easy step. Everything in academia should have their first name stricken (B.Gates instead of Bill Gates). Let the issue sort itself out. It will let either side put a nail in the coffin if correct.

They also need to have someone else replicate their research on a much larger sample size. 3000 papers is actually a pretty low number, especially over 30 years (thats a pathetic 100 papers per year).

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