Early in the pandemic (April 2020) I started what became a long #Twitter thread on #gender #bias in academic #publishing.
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New study: "More women-led papers receive at least one media mention in women-underrepresented fields, but they are cited less frequently across all fields. Women authors are underrepresented in national outlets and are more often reported by liberal media. Sentiment analysis shows that men-led papers are more often associated with positive sentiment in news text, while women-led papers elicit more negative sentiment."
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/10755470251360187Update. "Women are significantly underrepresented among highly cited scholars globally (0.255 women per man) and receive fewer citations and have lower h-indexes than men in most regions and disciplines. However, after controlling for productivity and career length, female scholars are cited more than men in the pooled sample, Asia, Europe, and in two fields (natural sciences and exact sciences/physics). Despite this, women’s h-index remains significantly lower than men’s in all regions except Africa and South America, and in all fields except social sciences."
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0334690 -
Update. "Women are significantly underrepresented among highly cited scholars globally (0.255 women per man) and receive fewer citations and have lower h-indexes than men in most regions and disciplines. However, after controlling for productivity and career length, female scholars are cited more than men in the pooled sample, Asia, Europe, and in two fields (natural sciences and exact sciences/physics). Despite this, women’s h-index remains significantly lower than men’s in all regions except Africa and South America, and in all fields except social sciences."
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0334690Update. "Women are markedly underrepresented among authors of retracted publications, particularly in cases involving multiple retractions."
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0335059The article is #OpenAccess. But on the day of publication, this #paywalled comment by Jenna Ahart appeared in Nature.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-03796-w -
Update. "Women are markedly underrepresented among authors of retracted publications, particularly in cases involving multiple retractions."
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0335059The article is #OpenAccess. But on the day of publication, this #paywalled comment by Jenna Ahart appeared in Nature.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-03796-wUpdate. "Authors with very feminine and masculine first names respectively get a lower and higher share of citations for every article published, irrespective of their contribution role."
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.08219 -
Update. "Authors with very feminine and masculine first names respectively get a lower and higher share of citations for every article published, irrespective of their contribution role."
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.08219Update. "In male-dominated fields, women have significantly broader research interests than men, while this gap diminishes and reverses in more gender-balanced fields. Although broader publication trajectories help women increase publication output, this strategy carries steeper citation penalties for women than for men. The results suggest that academic fields act as sites of inequality production, channeling women toward research patterns that boost immediate productivity while undermining long-term scholarly influence."
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/23780231251396273 -
Update. "In male-dominated fields, women have significantly broader research interests than men, while this gap diminishes and reverses in more gender-balanced fields. Although broader publication trajectories help women increase publication output, this strategy carries steeper citation penalties for women than for men. The results suggest that academic fields act as sites of inequality production, channeling women toward research patterns that boost immediate productivity while undermining long-term scholarly influence."
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/23780231251396273Update. In the field of oil pollution research, "female authors accounted for about 32% of the total authors…were significantly underrepresented in most of the African countries [and in] the UK and Norway…Gender variation in oil pollution publications was discovered to be influenced by religion in Africa; Islam had the mean highest rank when compared with Christianity."
https://doi.org/10.4314/jasem.v29i11.22 -
Update. In the field of oil pollution research, "female authors accounted for about 32% of the total authors…were significantly underrepresented in most of the African countries [and in] the UK and Norway…Gender variation in oil pollution publications was discovered to be influenced by religion in Africa; Islam had the mean highest rank when compared with Christianity."
https://doi.org/10.4314/jasem.v29i11.22Update. "We conduct a comprehensive comparison between peer-review scores and citation-based metrics across various scientific fields [in Italy]…While both evaluation methods exhibit sex bias, peer review systematically penalizes women more severely than citation-based metrics."
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1751157725001245 -
Update. "We conduct a comprehensive comparison between peer-review scores and citation-based metrics across various scientific fields [in Italy]…While both evaluation methods exhibit sex bias, peer review systematically penalizes women more severely than citation-based metrics."
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1751157725001245Update. A letter to the editor about a study I posted to this thread 11/23/25: "The suggestion that [the lower #retraction rate for women] is because male researchers undergo more scrutiny, propose bolder ideas and lead larger and more dynamic teams than do female researchers implies that male scientists are better at science. As female scientists, our lived experience points to alternative explanations: elevated rigour and scientific integrity by female scientists or more critical peer review of female-led manuscripts."
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-00120-y
(#paywalled) -
Update. A letter to the editor about a study I posted to this thread 11/23/25: "The suggestion that [the lower #retraction rate for women] is because male researchers undergo more scrutiny, propose bolder ideas and lead larger and more dynamic teams than do female researchers implies that male scientists are better at science. As female scientists, our lived experience points to alternative explanations: elevated rigour and scientific integrity by female scientists or more critical peer review of female-led manuscripts."
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-00120-y
(#paywalled)Update. "By analyzing all articles indexed in the PubMed database (>36.5 million articles published in >36,000 biomedical and life sciences journals), we show that the median amount of time spent under review is 7.4%–14.6% longer for female-authored articles than for male-authored articles."
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3003574 -
Update. "By analyzing all articles indexed in the PubMed database (>36.5 million articles published in >36,000 biomedical and life sciences journals), we show that the median amount of time spent under review is 7.4%–14.6% longer for female-authored articles than for male-authored articles."
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3003574@petersuber
Hmm, I don't know if I would write this sentence"By analyzing all articles indexed in the PubMed database (>36.5 million articles published in >36,000 biomedical and life sciences journals), we show that the median amount of time spent under review is 7.4%–14.6% longer for female-authored articles than for male-authored articles, and that differences remain significant after controlling for several factors."
when only 8 millions of the records in PubMed have submitted and accepted dates as part of their metadata
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Update. "By analyzing all articles indexed in the PubMed database (>36.5 million articles published in >36,000 biomedical and life sciences journals), we show that the median amount of time spent under review is 7.4%–14.6% longer for female-authored articles than for male-authored articles."
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3003574Update. "Citation counts [for female authors] are on average 5.5% lower than those of comparable male authors…Papers produced by all-female teams receive 56.7% fewer citations than those by all-male teams, while mixed-gender teams achieve a 30.9% citation advantage."
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-4155/paper10.pdf
