Penn Statistics in Imaging and Visualization Center, Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Informatics, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA.
Department of Bioengineering, School of Engineering and Applied Science, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA.
Nat Neurosci. 2020 Aug;23(8):918-926. doi: 10.1038/s41593-020-0658-y. Epub 2020 Jun 19.
Similarly to many scientific disciplines, neuroscience has increasingly attempted to confront pervasive gender imbalances. Although publishing and conference participation are often highlighted, recent research has called attention to the prevalence of gender imbalance in citations. Because of the downstream effects of citations on visibility and career advancement, understanding the role of gender in citation practices is vital for addressing scientific inequity. Here, we investigate whether gendered patterns are present in neuroscience citations. Using data from five top neuroscience journals, we find that reference lists tend to include more papers with men as first and last author than would be expected if gender were unrelated to referencing. Importantly, we show that this imbalance is driven largely by the citation practices of men and is increasing over time as the field diversifies. We assess and discuss possible mechanisms and consider how researchers might approach these issues in their own work.
与许多科学学科一样，神经科学也越来越试图应对普遍存在的性别失衡问题。尽管出版和会议参与经常受到关注，但最近的研究已经引起了对引文性别失衡的关注。由于引文对知名度和职业发展的后续影响，了解性别在引文实践中的作用对于解决科学不平等问题至关重要。在这里，我们研究了神经科学引文是否存在性别模式。我们使用来自五本顶级神经科学期刊的数据发现，如果性别与参考文献无关，那么参考文献列表中包含更多男性作为第一作者和最后作者的论文的可能性就越大。重要的是，我们表明，这种不平衡主要是由男性的引文实践驱动的，并且随着该领域的多样化，这种不平衡在不断增加。我们评估并讨论了可能的机制，并考虑了研究人员如何在自己的工作中处理这些问题。
