51. Rosalind’s Ghost: Biology, Collaboration, and the Female
- Author
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Luís A. Nunes Amaral, João Moreira, Xiao Han T. Zeng, Jordi Duch, Filippo Radicchi, Haroldo V. Ribeiro, Teresa K. Woodruff, Marta Sales-Pardo, Science and Engineering of Emergent Systems, Algorithms embedded in Physical Systems, Enginyeria Química, Enginyeria Informàtica i Matemàtiques, and Universitat Rovira i Virgili
- Subjects
0301 basic medicine ,Economics ,Ingeniería informática ,Social Sciences ,Bioinformatics ,Developmental psychology ,Database and Informatics Methods ,5. Gender equality ,Computer engineering ,Sex factors ,Scientists- Gender ,Biology (General) ,Scientists - Cooperative behavior ,Investigadors -- Cooperació internacional ,Careers ,Ecology ,General Neuroscience ,05 social sciences ,Genomics ,Chemical Engineering ,1544-9173 ,Group dynamic ,Genomic Databases ,Career stage ,Professions ,Chemistry ,Publishing ,Physical Sciences ,Meta-Research Article ,Engineering and Technology ,Female ,General Agricultural and Biological Sciences ,Statistics (Mathematics) ,Employment ,Gender discrimination ,QH301-705.5 ,Investigadors -- Diferències entre sexes ,Biology ,Research and Analysis Methods ,050905 science studies ,Research management ,General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology ,03 medical and health sciences ,Confidence Intervals ,Genetics ,Humans ,Molecular Biology ,Productivity ,Chemical Ecology ,General Immunology and Microbiology ,business.industry ,Ecology and Environmental Sciences ,Biology and Life Sciences ,Computational Biology ,Gender ,Genome Analysis ,Biological Databases ,030104 developmental biology ,Enginyeria informàtica ,Labor Economics ,People and Places ,Scientists ,Population Groupings ,Female faculty ,0509 other social sciences ,Scientific publishing ,business ,Mathematics - Abstract
Collaboration plays an increasingly important role in promoting research productivity and impact. What remains unclear is whether female and male researchers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematical (STEM) disciplines differ in their collaboration propensity. Here, we report on an empirical analysis of the complete publication records of 3,980 faculty members in six STEM disciplines at select U.S. research universities. We find that female faculty have significantly fewer distinct co-authors over their careers than males, but that this difference can be fully accounted for by females’ lower publication rate and shorter career lengths. Next, we find that female scientists have a lower probability of repeating previous co-authors than males, an intriguing result because prior research shows that teams involving new collaborations produce work with higher impact. Finally, we find evidence for gender segregation in some sub-disciplines in molecular biology, in particular in genomics where we find female faculty to be clearly under-represented., An empirical analysis of researchers’ publications reveals that females have fewer distinct coauthors yet have a lower chance of repeating previous coauthors than their male counterparts., Author Summary Collaboration plays an increasingly important role in promoting research productivity and impact. What remains unclear is whether female and male researchers differ in their collaboration practices. In our study, we report on an empirical analysis of the complete publication records of 3,980 faculty members in six science, technology, engineering, and mathematical disciplines at select U.S. research universities. First we found that female faculty have significantly fewer distinct co-authors over their careers than males, but that this difference can be fully accounted for by females’ lower publication rate and shorter career lengths. Next, we find that female scientists have a lower probability of repeating previous co-authors than males, an intriguing result because prior research shows that teams involving new collaborations produce work with higher impact. Finally, we find evidence for gender segregation in some sub-disciplines in molecular biology, in particular in genomics where we find female faculty to be clearly under-represented.
- Published
- 2016
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