Gender bias in team formation: The case of the European Science Foundation's grants

This paper investigates gender bias (if any) when teams are formed. We use data from the European Science Foundation to estimate if female scientists have the same opportunities as their male colleagues to join a team when applying for funds. To assess gender bias, we construct a control group of scientists with the competencies for being invited to join the team but do not join. By comparing the proportion of female scientists in the control group with the one in the observed teams, we find a gender bias against female scientists only when a project leader is a male scientist. At the same time, we do not observe gender bias when the project leader is a female scientist

It’s not the winning but the taking part that counts: how the process of applying for competitive grants is of benefit to researchers

“The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not winning but taking part.” So goes the famous saying by Pierre de Coubertin, the father of modern Olympic Games. But does the same apply for competitive research grants? Charles Ayoubi, Michele Pezzoni and Fabiana Visentin report on their study which finds that simply taking part in an application process has a positive effect on researchers’ publication rates and on the average impact factor of the journals in which they publish. Participating in a competitive grant also allows applicants to enhance their learning, explore new trends of research, and extend their collaboration networks

Impact of family characteristics on the gender publication gap: evidence for physicists in France

The publication gender gap in science has been extensively studied. Although women have been found to be less productive than men, little is known about the reasons behind gender differences. Unique longitudinal data collected by surveying a large sample of French physicists gave us the opportunity to investigate the role of family characteristics over time. Using panel data econometrics, we confirm the existence of an average gender gap of about two-thirds of a journal article per year, and about one-third when taking into account several important control variables such as age and career characteristics. We find that female scientists suffer an average productivity loss of about one article when they have a young child, while male scientists suffer an insignificant loss. We also find that female scientists benefit from having large families, with a productivity gain of 0.63 articles per year per child

Gender and the Publication Output of Graduate Students: A Case Study

We examine gender differences among the six PhD student cohorts 2004–2009 at the California Institute of Technology using a new dataset that includes information on trainees and their advisors and enables us to construct detailed measures of teams at the advisor level. We focus on the relationship between graduate student publications and: (1) their gender; (2) the gender of the advisor, (3) the gender pairing between the advisor and the student and (4) the gender composition of the team. We find that female graduate students coauthor on average 8.5% fewer papers than men; that students writing with female advisors publish 7.7% more. Of particular note is that gender pairing matters: male students working with female advisors publish 10.0%more than male students working with male advisors; women students working with male advisors publish 8.5% less. There is no difference between the publishing patterns of male students working with male advisors and female students working with female advisors. The results persist and are magnified when we focus on the quality of the published articles, as measured by average Impact Factor, instead of number of articles. We find no evidence that the number of publications relates to the gender composition of the team. Although the gender effects are reasonably modest, past research on processes of positive feedback and cumulative advantage suggest that the difference will grow, not shrink, over the careers of these recent cohorts

Scientific Productivity and Academic Promotion: A Study on French and Italian Physicists

The paper examines the determinants of scientific productivity (number of articles and journals’ impact factor) for a panel of about 3600 French and Italian academic physicists active in 2004-05. Endogeneity problems concerning promotion and productivity are addressed by specifying a generalized Tobit model, in which a selection probit equation accounts for the individual scientist’s probability of promotion to her present rank, and a productivity regression estimates the effects of age, gender, cohort of entry, and collaboration characteristics, conditional on the scientist’s rank. We find that the size and international nature of collaborative projects and co-authors’ past productivity have very significant impacts on current productivity, while age and gender, and past productivity are also influential determinants of both productivity and probability of promotion. Furthermore we show that the stop-and-go policies of recruitment and promotion, typical of the Italian and French centralized academic systems of governance, can leave significant long-lasting cohort effects on research productivity.

How fast is this novel technology going to be a hit?

Despite the high interest of scholars in identifying successful inventions, little attention has been devoted to investigate how (fast) the novel ideas embodied in original inventions are re-used in follow-on inventions. We overcome this limitation by empirically mapping and characterizing the trajectory of novel technologies' re-use in follow-on inventions. Specifically, we consider the factors affecting the time needed for a novel technology to be legitimated as well as to reach its full technological impact. We analyze how these diffusion dynamics are affected by the antecedent characteristics of the novel technology. We characterize novel technologies as those that make new combinations with existing technological components and trace these new combinations in follow-on inventions. We find that novel technologies combining for the first time technological components which are similar and which are familiar to the inventors' community require a short time to be legitimated but show a low technological impact. In contrast, combining for the first time technological components with a science-based nature generates technologies with a long legitimation time but also high technological impact

How to kill inventors: testing the Massacrator© algorithm for inventor disambiguation

Inventor disambiguation is an increasingly important issue for users of patent data. We propose and test a number of refinements to the original Massacrator algorithm, originally proposed by Lissoni et al. (The keins database on academic inventors: methodology and contents, 2006) and now applied to APE-INV, a free access database funded by the European Science Foundation. Following Raffo and Lhuillery (Res Policy 38:1617-1627, 2009) we describe disambiguation as a three step process: cleaning&parsing, matching, and filtering. By means of sensitivity analysis, based on MonteCarlo simulations, we show how various filtering criteria can be manipulated in order to obtain optimal combinations of precision and recall (type I and type II errors). We also show how these different combinations generate different results for applications to studies on inventors' productivity, mobility, and networking; and discuss quality issues related to linguistic issues. The filtering criteria based upon information on inventors' addresses are sensitive to data quality, while those based upon information on co-inventorship networks are always effective. Details on data access and data quality improvement via feedback collection are also discussed

Admissibilidade do direito de regresso e a responsabilidade estatal decorrente de atividade militar à luz da CF/1988

A História registrou uma mudança do Estado, que passou de Absolutista, isto é, irresponsável pelos danos causados a terceiros, em virtude de seu comportamento, para uma responsabilidade e subjetiva, inicialmente, para depois responder de forma objetiva perante seus administrados. Há de um lado, a teoria da responsabilidade subjetiva, que se configura quando ocorre falha no serviço público, em que o Estado, por ação ou omissão, deixa de cumprir sua função, neste caso é imprescindível a culpa ou dolo do agente causador do dano. Por outro lado, há a responsabilidade objetiva, em que o poder público responde, independentemente de culpa, bastando comprovar-se o dano e o nexo de causalidade entre este e a conduta do Estado. Com fundamento na teoria do risco administrativo, o Estado pode ser responsabilizado, ou eximir-se de responsabilidade, caso reste comprovada culpa concorrente ou exclusiva da vítima, bem como caso fortuito ou força maior. Na esfera militar também é possível a responsabilidade estatal, assegurado o direito de regresso em face do agente militar causador do dano, mediante comprovação de culpa ou dolo. O processo administrativo, a sindicância e o inquérito policial militar são os instrumentos procedimentais para a apuração e imputação de responsabilidade.History has been registered changes from State, it turned as absolutely, want say, unresponsability for damages caused to other people, because his behavior to a person responsability, first of all, and after this answer directly about his people who has been administrating. Understending for a vision, the objective responsibility theory, that to turn realy when there are fault in the public service, in this case, the State, for action or whitout action, does not do his function, in this case its absolutely necessary doing something but whitout intention or doing something whit intention from agent who to cause damage. For a different view, there is objective responsability, situation that Public Power answer for his acts, not interesting his doing something but whitout intention, is not necessary more than to prove damage and communication between this and action from State. Based on the administractive risk theory, State can be responsible for something or can not be responsible for something, if to finish proved doing something but whitout intention together other people or exclusive from victim of the damage, as unpredictable case or caused for nature power. About military subjects, its possible responsability from State too, ensured to return right against military agent who caused damage, after to prove concerning doing something but whitout intention or doing something whit intention. Administractive process, administractive investigation and policial investigation military are proceedings means to investigate and to put responsibility against someone

Gender bias in team formation: The case of the European Science Foundation's grants

This paper investigates gender bias (if any) when teams are formed. We use data from the European Science Foundation to estimate if female scientists have the same opportunities as their male colleagues to join a team when applying for funds. To assess gender bias, we construct a control group of scientists with the competencies for being invited to join the team but do not join. By comparing the proportion of female scientists in the control group with the one in the observed teams, we find a gender bias against female scientists only when a project leader is a male scientist. At the same time, we do not observe gender bias when the project leader is a female scientist