Meta-Research: Individual-level researcher data confirm the widening gender gap in publishing rates during COVID-19
Abstract
Publishing is part and parcel of a successful academic career, and Covid-19 has amplified gender disparities in manuscript submissions and authorships. We used longitudinal publication data on 431,207 scientists in biology, chemistry, and clinical and basic medicine to quantify the differential impact of Covid-19 on women's and men's annual publishing rates. In a difference-in-differences analysis, we estimated that the average gender difference in publication productivity increased from -0.26 in 2019 (corresponding to a 17% lower output for women than men) to -0.35 in 2020 (corresponding to a 24% lower output for women than men). An age-group comparison showed a widening gender gap for both early career and mid-career scientists. The increasing gender gap was most pronounced among highly productive authors and scientists in clinical medicine and biology. Our study demonstrates the importance of reinforcing institutional commitments to diversity through policies that support the inclusion and retention of women researchers.
Data availability
The current manuscript is a computational study, so no data have been generated for this manuscript. Source data and code will be provided on git-hub for all tables and figures.
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Author details
Funding
Samfund og Erhverv, Det Frie Forskningsråd (DFF-0133-00165B)
- Emil Bargmann Madsen
- Mathias Wullum Nielsen
- Josefine Bjørnholm
- Jens Peter Andersen
Aarhus Universitets Forskningsfond (AUFF-F-2018-7-5)
- Jens Peter Andersen
Independent Research Fund Denmark (9130-00029B)
- Mathias Wullum Nielsen
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Copyright
© 2022, Madsen et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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