Newswise – COLUMBUS, Ohio – Women in science are less likely than their male counterparts to receive authorship credits for the work they do, according to a new groundbreaking study.
The researchers used a large set of administrative data from the universities they helped build that revealed exactly who was involved and paid for in various research projects.
These data were linked to patents and articles published in scientific journals, which call the authors, to see which people working on individual projects received credit in patents and journals and who did not.
The results, published today (June 22, 2022) in the journal Nature, showed that women working on a research project were 13% less likely to be named authors in related scientific articles compared to their peers. male colleagues.
“Women don’t get the same credit as men in journal articles,” said Enrico Berkes, co-author of the study and a postdoctoral researcher in economics at Ohio State University. “The gap is persistent and strong.”
And there was another void, even bigger.
“We found that women were 59 percent less likely than men to be named in patents related to projects they both worked on,” said study co-author Bruce Weinberg, a professor of economics at state of Ohio.
These findings were further supported by a survey of more than 2,400 scientists who found that women reported being excluded from the authorship of scientific articles to which they contributed more often than men.
The key administrative data for this study came from the UMETRICS dataset available through the Innovation and Science Research Institute, which contained detailed information on sponsored research projects for 52 colleges and universities in 2013. in 2016.
It included information on 128,859 people who worked on 9,778 research teams, including professors, graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, research staff, and undergraduate students.
“What’s unique is that we have the data to know exactly who worked on individual research projects and what their role was,” Weinberg said. “This rich data helps us know whether or not people should be credited with a particular scientific or patent publication.”
Researchers know that women are less likely than men to hold senior positions in research teams. But that did not explain the gap. This study showed that at all levels of position, women were less likely than men to get credit.
This was especially evident in the early stages of his career. For example, only 15 out of every 100 graduate students were named as authors in a paper, compared to 21 out of every 100 male graduate students.
“Women are more likely to hold support positions, but they receive less credit compared to men at all levels,” Berkes said.
Women were less likely to earn authoritative credits in all scientific fields, from those in the majority (such as health) to those in the minority (such as engineering).
The results showed that women were even less likely to be listed as authors of what scientists consider “high-impact” articles.
“There should never be a credit gap between men and women. But you really don’t want a gap in research that has the biggest impact in a scientific field,” Weinberg said. “This is a major source of concern.”
In the survey of scientists, the results showed that 43% of women said they had been excluded from a scientific article to which they had contributed, compared to 38% of men.
Women were also more likely than men to report that others underestimated their contributions and faced discrimination, stereotypes, and prejudice. One reported: “Being a woman [means] that you often contribute in one way or another to science, but unless you shout or make a strong point, our contributions are often underestimated. “
Several respondents also indicated that similar biases may affect racial and ethnic minorities and foreign-born scientists.
Weinberg noted that women scientists have long been known to receive less credit for their work. The most famous example may be Rosalind Franklin, who made a major contribution to the discovery of the structure of DNA, but was unjustly denied the authorship of the original Crick and Watson paper.
This new research adds an additional level of evidence with UMETRICS administrative data and survey results.
“All the evidence is strong and pointing in the same direction,” Berkes said.
The research was funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Institute on Aging, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.
Other co-authors of the study were Matthew Ross of Claremont Graduate University; Britta Glennon of Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania; Raviv Murciano-Goroff of Boston University’s Questrom School of Business; and Julia Lane at the Wagner School of Public Policy at New York University.
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