IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0264265.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Mind the gender gap: COVID-19 lockdown effects on gender differences in preprint submissions

Author

Listed:
  • Iñaki Ucar
  • Margarita Torre
  • Antonio Elías

Abstract

The gender gap is a well-known problem in academia and, despite its gradual narrowing, recent estimations indicate that it will persist for decades. Short-term descriptive studies suggest that this gap may have actually worsened during the months of confinement following the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. In this work, we evaluate the impact of the COVID-19 lockdown on female and male academics’ research productivity using preprint drop-off data. We examine a total of 307,902 unique research articles deposited in 5 major preprint repositories during the period between January and May each year from 2017 to 2020. We find that the proportion of female authors in online repositories steadily increased over time; however, the trend reversed during the confinement and gender parity worsened in two respects. First, the proportion of male authors in preprints increased significantly during lockdown. Second, the proportion of male authors in COVID-19-related articles was significantly higher than that of women. Overall, our results imply that the gender gap in academia suffered an approximately 1-year setback during the strict lockdown months of 2020, and COVID-related research areas suffered an additional 1.5-year setback.

Suggested Citation

  • Iñaki Ucar & Margarita Torre & Antonio Elías, 2022. "Mind the gender gap: COVID-19 lockdown effects on gender differences in preprint submissions," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 17(3), pages 1-13, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0264265
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0264265
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0264265
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0264265&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0264265?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Vincent Larivière & Chaoqun Ni & Yves Gingras & Blaise Cronin & Cassidy R. Sugimoto, 2013. "Bibliometrics: Global gender disparities in science," Nature, Nature, vol. 504(7479), pages 211-213, December.
    2. Kyle R. Myers & Wei Yang Tham & Yian Yin & Nina Cohodes & Jerry G. Thursby & Marie C. Thursby & Peter Schiffer & Joseph T. Walsh & Karim R. Lakhani & Dashun Wang, 2020. "Unequal effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on scientists," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 4(9), pages 880-883, September.
    3. repec:nas:journl:v:115:y:2018:p:7943-7948 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Jevin D West & Jennifer Jacquet & Molly M King & Shelley J Correll & Carl T Bergstrom, 2013. "The Role of Gender in Scholarly Authorship," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(7), pages 1-6, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Schmal, W. Benedikt & Haucap, Justus & Knoke, Leon, 2023. "The role of gender and coauthors in academic publication behavior," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 52(10).
    2. Ryan, M. & Tuke, J. & Hutchinson, M.R. & Spencer, S.J., 2023. "Gender-specific effects of COVID-19 lockdowns on scientific publishing productivity: Impact and resilience," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 320(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Nakajima, Kazuki & Liu, Ruodan & Shudo, Kazuyuki & Masuda, Naoki, 2023. "Quantifying gender imbalance in East Asian academia: Research career and citation practice," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 17(4).
    2. Liu, Meijun & Zhang, Ning & Hu, Xiao & Jaiswal, Ajay & Xu, Jian & Chen, Hong & Ding, Ying & Bu, Yi, 2022. "Further divided gender gaps in research productivity and collaboration during the COVID-19 pandemic: Evidence from coronavirus-related literature," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 16(2).
    3. Lin Zhang & Yuanyuan Shang & Ying Huang & Gunnar Sivertsen, 2022. "Gender differences among active reviewers: an investigation based on publons," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(1), pages 145-179, January.
    4. Chaojiang Wu & Erjia Yan & Yongjun Zhu & Kai Li, 2021. "Gender imbalance in the productivity of funded projects: A study of the outputs of National Institutes of Health R01 grants," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 72(11), pages 1386-1399, November.
    5. Kwiek, Marek & Szymula, Łukasz, 2024. "Growth of Science and Women: Methodological Challenges of Using Structured Big Data," SocArXiv w34pr, Center for Open Science.
    6. Josh Yamamoto & Eitan Frachtenberg, 2022. "Gender Differences in Collaboration Patterns in Computer Science," Publications, MDPI, vol. 10(1), pages 1-21, February.
    7. Ann-Maree Vallence & Mark R Hinder & Hakuei Fujiyama, 2019. "Data-driven selection of conference speakers based on scientific impact to achieve gender parity," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(7), pages 1-10, July.
    8. Fengyuan Liu & Petter Holme & Matteo Chiesa & Bedoor AlShebli & Talal Rahwan, 2023. "Gender inequality and self-publication are common among academic editors," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 7(3), pages 353-364, March.
    9. Gita Ghiasi & Matthew Harsh & Andrea Schiffauerova, 2018. "Inequality and collaboration patterns in Canadian nanotechnology: implications for pro-poor and gender-inclusive policy," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 115(2), pages 785-815, May.
    10. Zhang, Lin & Shang, Yuanyuan & HUANG, Ying & Sivertsen, Gunnar, 2021. "Gender differences among active reviewers: an investigation based on Publons," SocArXiv 4z6w8, Center for Open Science.
    11. Gómez-Ferri, Javier & González-Alcaide, Gregorio & LLopis-Goig, Ramón, 2019. "Measuring dissatisfaction with coauthorship: An empirical approach based on the researchers’ perception," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 13(4).
    12. Abramo, Giovanni & Cicero, Tindaro & D’Angelo, Ciriaco Andrea, 2015. "Should the research performance of scientists be distinguished by gender?," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 9(1), pages 25-38.
    13. Jamal El-Ouahi & Vincent Larivière, 2023. "On the lack of women researchers in the Middle East and North Africa," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(8), pages 4321-4348, August.
    14. Helena Mihaljević-Brandt & Lucía Santamaría & Marco Tullney, 2016. "The Effect of Gender in the Publication Patterns in Mathematics," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(10), pages 1-23, October.
    15. Hamid R. Jamali & Alireza Abbasi, 2023. "Gender gaps in Australian research publishing, citation and co-authorship," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(5), pages 2879-2893, May.
    16. Charissa Samaniego & Peggy Lindner & Maryam A. Kazmi & Bobbie A. Dirr & Dejun Tony Kong & Evonzia Jeff-Eke & Christiane Spitzmueller, 2023. "Higher research productivity = more pay? Gender pay-for-productivity inequity across disciplines," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(2), pages 1395-1407, February.
    17. Nataly Matias-Rayme & Iuliana Botezan & Mari Carmen Suárez-Figueroa & Rodrigo Sánchez-Jiménez, 2024. "Gender assignment in doctoral theses: revisiting Teseo with a method based on cultural consensus theory," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 129(7), pages 4553-4572, July.
    18. Shubhanshu Mishra & Brent D Fegley & Jana Diesner & Vetle I Torvik, 2018. "Self-citation is the hallmark of productive authors, of any gender," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(9), pages 1-21, September.
    19. Yongchao Ma & Ying Teng & Zhongzhun Deng & Li Liu & Yi Zhang, 2023. "Does writing style affect gender differences in the research performance of articles?: An empirical study of BERT-based textual sentiment analysis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(4), pages 2105-2143, April.
    20. Mohsen Jadidi & Fariba Karimi & Haiko Lietz & Claudia Wagner, 2018. "Gender Disparities In Science? Dropout, Productivity, Collaborations And Success Of Male And Female Computer Scientists," Advances in Complex Systems (ACS), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 21(03n04), pages 1-23, May.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0264265. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.