Abstract
Women increasingly occupy jobs in psychological research, but continue to face career barriers. One such barrier is fewer authorship and publication opportunities, with women often having fewer first authorships than men. In this research, we examine the overlooked role of middle authorship. Middle authorship contributes to various indices of productivity, while having lower costs. Study 1 looks at five years of authorship in two major journals in social and personality psychology. Study 2 examines publication records of all social psychology faculty in the Netherlands. Both studies find that women have fewer authorship possibilities: In Study 1, women were underrepresented as authors in academic journals, while women in Study 2 had shorter publication lists. More importantly, this tendency was exacerbated for middle authorship positions. Furthermore, the percentage of middle authorship publications were positively related to more publications overall. A focus on middle authorship highlights previously underestimated challenges women continue to face in psychological research.
Highlights
Women increasingly occupy jobs in psychological research, but continue to face career barriers
Study 2 examines publication records of all social psychology faculty in the Netherlands. Both studies find that women have fewer authorship possibilities: In Study 1, women were underrepresented as authors in academic journals, while women in Study 2 had shorter publication lists
We provide first evidence that women are underrepresented in publication authorship beyond first authorship positions and show gender disparities in middle- and last-au thorship positions in social and personality psychology
Summary
Women increasingly occupy jobs in psychological research, but continue to face career barriers. Study 2 examines publication records of all social psychology faculty in the Netherlands Both studies find that women have fewer authorship possibilities: In Study 1, women were underrepresented as authors in academic journals, while women in Study 2 had shorter publication lists. This tendency was exacerbated for middle authorship positions. A focus on middle authorship highlights previously underestimated challenges women continue to face in psychological research. While previous research has largely focused on gender disparities in first authorship, metrics of career success are based on overall productivity, including other authorship positions. To study disparities in publication rates, a large body of previous research has mainly focused on first authorship, while concentrating less on last, and neglecting middle authorship positions. A range of reasons are discussed for this underrepresentation, such as gender bias, discrimination, underrepresentation in senior positions, or gendered behavior (Brown & Goh, 2016; West et al, 2013)
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