Gender Inequality in Publication Prestige Among Graduate Students in Biological Sciences

Abstract

Gender parity in academia remains elusive, even in fields, such as biological sciences, that award approximately half of their PhDs to women. Based on a sample of graduate students in biological sciences followed over 5 years during their PhD programs, we find that women publish in journals with lower impact factors and are less likely to publish in top journals. Notably, gender inequality in journal impact factors holds only for total publications but not for first-authored publications, which implies that differential opportunities for collaborations leading to high-impact publications may be one factor hindering gender equity.

Keywords

equity gender graduate education higher education journal impact factor postsecondary education publication regression analyses

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Basson

Badia

Tufenkji

Sugimoto

C. R.

Larivière

(2023). Gender differences in submission behavior exacerbate publication disparities in elite journals. eLife, 12, Article RP90049. https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.90049.1

Blair-Loy

Cech

E. A.

(2022). Misconceiving merit: Paradoxes of excellence and devotion in academic science and engineering. University of Chicago Press.

Dinsmore

Roksa

(2023). Inequalities in becoming a scholar: Race, gender and student-advisor relationships in doctoral education. Teachers College Record, 125, 84–107.

Ehrenberg

R. G.

Zuckerman

Groen

Brucker

(2009). Changing the education of scholars. In Ehrenberg

R. G.

Kuh

C. V.

(Eds.), Doctoral education and the faculty of the future (pp. 15–34). Cornell University Press.

Feldon

D. F.

Peugh

Maher

M. A.

Roksa

Tofel-Grehl

(2017). Time-to-credit gender inequities of first-year PhD students in the biological sciences. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 16(1), Article ar4. https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.16-08-0237

Holman

Stuart-Fox

Hauser

C. E.

(2018). The gender gap in science: How long until women are equally represented? PLoS Biology, 16(4), Article e2004956. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.2004956

Larivière

C. Q.

Gingras

Cronin

Sugimoto

C. R.

(2013). Global gender disparities in science. Nature, 504, 211–213.

Lubienski

S. T.

Miller

E. K.

Saclarides

E. S.

(2018). Sex differences in doctoral student publication rates. Educational Researcher, 47(1), 76–81.

Miller

Roksa

(2020). Balancing research and service in academia: Gender, race, and laboratory tasks. Gender & Society, 34(1), 131–152.

10.

Morales

McKiernan

E. C.

Niles

M. T.

Schimanski

Alperin

J. P.

(2021). How faculty define quality, prestige, and impact of academic journals. PLoS One, 16(10), Article e0257340. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0257340

11.

National Science Foundation. (2015). Science and engineering degrees: 1966–2012. www.nsf.gov/statistics/2015/nsf15326/

12.

Nolan

S. A.

Buckner

J. P.

Marzabadi

C. H.

Kuck

V. J.

(2007). Training and mentoring of chemists: A study of gender disparity. Sex Roles, 58, 235–250.

13.

Roksa

Wang

Feldon

Ericson

(2022). Who is publishing journal articles during graduate school? Racial and gender inequalities in biological sciences over time. Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, 15(1), 47–57. https://doi.org/10.1037/dhe0000336

14.

Sallee

M. W.

(2011). Performing masculinity: Considering gender in doctoral student socialization. The Journal of Higher Education, 82(2), 187–216.

15.

Seagram

B. C.

Gould

Pyke

S. W.

(1998). An investigation of gender and other variables on time to completion of doctoral degrees. Research in Higher Education, 39, 319–335.

16.

Sheltzer

J. M.

Smith

J. C.

(2014). Elite male faculty in the life sciences employ fewer women. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(28), 10107–10112.

17.

West

J. D.

Jacquet

King

M. M.

Correll

S. J.

Bergstrom

C. T.

(2013). The role of gender in scholarly authorship. PloS One, 8(7), Article e66212. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0066212

18.

Williams

Rincon

Finn

(2016). Climate control: Gender and racial bias in engineering? SSRN. http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4014946

Supplementary Material

Please find the following supplemental material available below.

For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.

For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.

0.00 MB

0.25 MB