Women published less during early COVID-19

Abstract

Women—especially those early in their careers—submitted fewer manuscripts to journals than men during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new study of 2,329 Elsevier journals ( PLOS One 2021, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0257919 ). The study, by European social scientists, shows a 30% increase in article submissions from February to May 2020 compared with the same months in 2019. But when the researchers looked at submissions from individual researchers, women across all research areas, including the physical sciences, submitted fewer manuscripts in the 2020 period than they had in 2019. This suggests that women had comparatively fewer opportunities than men for research at the start of the pandemic, the researchers say. Younger women—those less than 20 years from their first publication—had a larger reduction in submissions than older women, a difference the authors attribute to more family responsibilities. Health and medicine journals showed the largest rise in submissions