Abstract
Despite increasing rates of women researching in math-intensive fields, publications by female authors remain underrepresented. By analyzing millions of records from the dedicated bibliographic databases zbMATH, arXiv, and ADS, we unveil the chronological evolution of authorships by women in mathematics, physics, and astronomy. We observe a pronounced shortage of female authors in top-ranked journals, with quasistagnant figures in various distinguished periodicals in the first two disciplines and a significantly more equitable situation in the latter. Additionally, we provide an interactive open-access web interface to further examine the data. To address whether female scholars submit fewer articles for publication to relevant journals or whether they are consciously or unconsciously disadvantaged by the peer review system, we also study authors’ perceptions of their submission practices and analyze around 10,000 responses, collected as part of a recent global survey of scientists. Our analysis indicates that men and women perceive their submission practices to be similar, with no evidence that a significantly lower number of submissions by women is responsible for their underrepresentation in top-ranked journals. According to the self-reported responses, a larger number of articles submitted to prestigious venues correlates rather with aspects associated with pronounced research activity, a well-established network, and academic seniority.
Highlights
A strong publication record ranks among the most powerful determinants of academic career success in many disciplines, exerting significant influence on decisions about tenure, funding, and promotions (Krantz, 2007; McGrail, Rickard, & Jones, 2006)
We analyze the answers of almost 10,000 worldwide scientists from the physical sciences and mathematics who participated in an online snowball-sampled survey and answered the following question: “During the last five years, how many articles have you submitted to journals that are top-ranked in your field?” We show that the respondents’ gender does not play a significant role in their perceived submission practices
Our analyses are based on the replies of participants with at least a Master’s degree that are primarily working in mathematics, physics, or astronomy and that entered a valid answer to the question: “During the last five years, how many articles have you submitted to journals that are top-ranked in your field?” This selection yields 9,984 responses
Summary
A strong publication record ranks among the most powerful determinants of academic career success in many disciplines, exerting significant influence on decisions about tenure, funding, and promotions (Krantz, 2007; McGrail, Rickard, & Jones, 2006). Big-science collaborations that rely on access to large facilities to perform research “increasingly resemble organizations in themselves” (Birnholtz, 2008) All of their members, in a growing number that often creeps into the thousands, are listed as authors on any paper published by the collaboration: see, for example, Smith (2016) for astronomy and Pritychenko (2016) for nuclear and particle physics. Our two analyses of survey responses and bibliographic data are not directly comparable, it is useful to discuss their implications for the existence of potential imbalances in the peer review process in mathematics and physics altogether This is even more the case given that the respondents’ perceptions of their own submission practices are very similar across disciplines, which is in discrepancy with the measured outcomes in the considered topical journal publications
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