Men Set Their Own Cites High: Gender and Self-citation across Fields and over Time

How common is self-citation in scholarly publication, and does the practice vary by gender? Using novel methods and a data set of 1.5 million research papers in the scholarly database JSTOR published between 1779 and 2011, the authors find that nearly 10 percent of references are self-citations by a paper's authors. The findings also show that between 1779 and 2011, men cited their own papers 56 percent more than did women. In the last two decades of data, men self-cited 70 percent more than women. Women are also more than 10 percentage points more likely than men to not cite their own previous work at all. While these patterns could result from differences in the number of papers that men and women authors have published rather than gender-specific patterns of self-citation behavior, this gender gap in self-citation rates has remained stable over the last 50 years, despite increased representation of women in academia. The authors break down self-citation patterns by academic field and number of authors and comment on potential mechanisms behind these observations. These findings have important implications for scholarly visibility and cumulative advantage in academic careers.Comment: final published articl

Cognitive Bias and the Motherhood Penalty

Women experience significant penalties in wages and other labor market outcomes when they have children. In this Article, we review and evaluate theory and research on cognitive bias and the motherhood penalty. Several theories predict that discrimination in the form of cognitive bias accounts for at least a part of the penalty that mothers experience. These theories include status characteristics theory, the stereotype content model, the shifting standards model, and the lack of fit model. Empirical evidence from controlled laboratory experiments and field studies strongly supports the general hypothesis that women experience labor market discrimination when they have children. There is also some evidence that the penalty may vary by a mother\u27s race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation. Following a review of theory and evidence, we consider ways in which the penalty might be reduced, including increasing the availability of family-friendly workplace policies, the use of clearly specified hiring criteria, increasing accountability, and increasing the diversity of hiring committees. We conclude with a discussion of aspects of the motherhood penalty that require further research

By Holly lord and J. McGratH coHoon aUtHorS:

and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation or the Computing Research Association. This report is posted on the CRA websit

The role of gender in scholarly authorship.

Gender disparities appear to be decreasing in academia according to a number of metrics, such as grant funding, hiring, acceptance at scholarly journals, and productivity, and it might be tempting to think that gender inequity will soon be a problem of the past. However, a large-scale analysis based on over eight million papers across the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities reveals a number of understated and persistent ways in which gender inequities remain. For instance, even where raw publication counts seem to be equal between genders, close inspection reveals that, in certain fields, men predominate in the prestigious first and last author positions. Moreover, women are significantly underrepresented as authors of single-authored papers. Academics should be aware of the subtle ways that gender disparities can occur in scholarly authorship

Percentage of women relative to total PhDs and percentage of women in tenure or tenure track positions and full professorships in Science and Engineering from 1960–2006 (data from reference [33]) as well as percentage of women in various author positions from 1960–2009 as a result of this analysis.

<p>1st and 2nd author positions are listed for papers with at least two authors. Last author percentage is for papers with at least three authors.</p