Gender-Based Analysis of Intra-Institutional Research Productivity and Collaboration

Abstract

Current Research Information Systems (CRISs) offer great opportunities for assessments of institutional research outputs and extraction of useful and actionable knowledge based on various data-analysis techniques. However, many of these opportunities have not been explored in depth, especially in culture-sensitive areas such as gender-based analysis of research productivity and collaboration. In this paper we present GERBER, a network-based methodology and accompanying tool for gender-based analysis of publication data stored in institutional CRISs. GERBER relies on statistically robust techniques applied on weighted co-authorship networks whose nodes are enriched with different types of researcher evaluation metrics. The functionality of GERBER is demonstrated on publication data stored in the institutional CRIS of the Faculty of Sciences, University of Novi Sad, Serbia. The obtained results show that GERBER enables institutional research managers and policy makers to detect gender inequalities and homophily in research productivity and collaboration. Finally, we discuss different possibilities to integrate GERBER with CRISs in order to facilitate continuous gender-based evaluation of researchers.