Meta-Research: The effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the gender gap in research productivity within academia

  1. Kiran GL Lee  Is a corresponding author
  2. Adele Mennerat
  3. Dieter Lukas
  4. Hannah L Dugdale
  5. Antica Culina  Is a corresponding author
  1. Groningen Institute for Evolutionary Life Sciences, University of Groningen, Netherlands
  2. Department of Animal and Plant Sciences, University of Sheffield, United Kingdom
  3. Department of Biological Sciences, University of Bergen, Norway
  4. Department of Human Behavior, Ecology and Culture, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Germany
  5. Rudjer Boskovic Institute, Croatia
  6. Netherlands Institute of Ecology, NIOO-KNAW, Netherlands
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6 figures, 1 table and 4 additional files

Figures

Overall effect of the pandemic on the gender gap in research productivity.

Orchard plot showing all 130 effect sizes (points), and the precision with which they were measured (point size). The plot shows the mean effect size (darker coloured point outlined in black and …

Effect of the pandemic on the gender gap in research productivity for three different measures of productivity.

Orchard plots comparing the distribution of effect sizes (points) and the precision with which they were measured (point size) when the measure of research productivity is based on responses to …

Overall effect of the pandemic on the gender gap in research productivity for five research fields.

Orchard plot comparing the distribution of effect sizes (points) and the precision with which they were measured (point sizes) for five research fields. Each plot shows the mean effect size (darker …

Effect of the pandemic on the gender gap in research productivity (as measured by number of articles submitted or published) for five research fields.

Each point shows the proportion of female authors before (left) or during (right) the pandemic. The solid lines connect the mean value for each research field before and during the pandemic. The …

Effect of the pandemic on the gender gap in research productivity (as measured by number of articles submitted or published) for five authorship positions.

Orchard plots comparing the distribution of effect sizes (points) and the precision with which they were measured (point sizes), for various authorship positions. Each plot shows the mean effect …

Figure 6 with 1 supplement
Checking for possible publication bias.

Funnel plots of effect sizes and their precision, as a function of standard error, for studies that measure research productivity by responses to a survey (A), and by number of articles published (B)…

Figure 6—figure supplement 1
Forest plot of leave-one-out analysis for survey studies only.

For each survey-study left out, the corresponding model estimate and 95% confidence interval is given. While there is large variation in the individual estimates, there is no single study that …

Tables

Table 1
Final Boolean search string used in full literature search for texts since 2020.

Terms in italics were added using litsearchR.

Concept groupPICO groupTerms
AcademiaPopulation(academi* OR author* OR database* OR journal* OR research OR scien*)
GenderPopulationAND
(female* OR gender OR male* OR men OR women)
PandemicInterventionAND
(coronavirus OR covid OR pandemic)
InequalityComparatorAND
(bias* OR disparit* OR disproportion* OR fewer OR gap OR "gender difference*" OR imbalance* OR inequalit* OR inequit* OR parity OR "sex difference*" OR skew* OR unequal)
ProductivityOutcomeAND
(performan* OR publication* OR publish* OR productiv*)
Exclusion of biomedical studiesPopulationAND NOT
(experiment OR laboratory OR mortality OR surviv* OR "acute respiratory" OR gis OR icu OR risk OR rna OR symptoms)

Additional files

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