Abstract
Publications are essential for a successful academic career, and there is evidence that the COVID-19 pandemic has amplified existing gender disparities in the publishing process. We used longitudinal publication data on 431,207 authors in four disciplines - basic medicine, biology, chemistry and clinical medicine - to quantify the differential impact of COVID-19 on the annual publishing rates of men and women. In a difference-in-differences analysis, we estimated that the average gender difference in publication productivity increased from -0.26 in 2019 to -0.35 in 2020; this corresponds to the output of women being 17% lower than the output of men in 2109, and 24% lower in 2020. An age-group comparison showed a widening gender gap for both early-career and mid-career scientists. The increasing gender gap was most pronounced among highly productive authors and in biology and clinical medicine. Our study demonstrates the importance of reinforcing institutional commitments to diversity through policies that support the inclusion and retention of women in research.
Highlights
Gender disparities in academic publishing have widened during the COVID-19 pandemic
Descriptive results Our analysis suggests that gender disparities in annual publication outputs have widened during COVID-19
We estimated the differential impact of COVID-19 on the annual publication rates of women and men in 2020 compared to 2019
Summary
Gender disparities in academic publishing have widened during the COVID-19 pandemic. The proportion of preprints and manuscript submissions with women as authors has decreased (Cui et al, 2021; Kibbe, 2020; Mogensen et al, 2021; Squazzoni et al, 2020; Williams et al, 2021), as has the proportions of preprints and published articles with women as either the first author or the senior author (Andersen et al, 2020; Inno et al, 2020; Lerchenmüller et al, 2021; Muric et al, 2021; Ribarovska et al, 2021). Research on gender and publication productivity suggests that women (on average) publish fewer articles than do men (Mairesse and Pezzoni, 2015), the magnitude of this difference varies by career stage, discipline and country and has diminished over time (Huang et al, 2020; Sax et al, 2002; Xie and Schauman, 2005). The gender imbalance in publishing rates should be understood in the context of broader disparities in the science system Structural variables such as employment rank, access to resources, university prestige, appointment type, teaching loads (Eagly, 2020; Taylor et al, 2006) and available time for research (Guarino and Borden, 2017; Leišyte , 2016) all partially explain the observed gender imbalances in publication productivity (Allison and Long, 1990; Bland et al, 2006; Xie and Shauman, 1998). Research finds that women scientists (compared to men) tend to span more topics in their research activities, face stricter editorial standards in peer reviewing (Hengel, 2017), and take on greater shares of parenthood responsibilities (Derrick et al, 2021), which likely perpetuate publishing disparities
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