Cargando…

Gender and the Publication Output of Graduate Students: A Case Study

We examine gender differences among the six PhD student cohorts 2004–2009 at the California Institute of Technology using a new dataset that includes information on trainees and their advisors and enables us to construct detailed measures of teams at the advisor level. We focus on the relationship b...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Pezzoni, Michele, Mairesse, Jacques, Stephan, Paula, Lane, Julia
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4711938/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26760776
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0145146
_version_ 1782409985313996800
author Pezzoni, Michele
Mairesse, Jacques
Stephan, Paula
Lane, Julia
author_facet Pezzoni, Michele
Mairesse, Jacques
Stephan, Paula
Lane, Julia
author_sort Pezzoni, Michele
collection PubMed
description We examine gender differences among the six PhD student cohorts 2004–2009 at the California Institute of Technology using a new dataset that includes information on trainees and their advisors and enables us to construct detailed measures of teams at the advisor level. We focus on the relationship between graduate student publications and: (1) their gender; (2) the gender of the advisor, (3) the gender pairing between the advisor and the student and (4) the gender composition of the team. We find that female graduate students co-author on average 8.5% fewer papers than men; that students writing with female advisors publish 7.7% more. Of particular note is that gender pairing matters: male students working with female advisors publish 10.0% more than male students working with male advisors; women students working with male advisors publish 8.5% less. There is no difference between the publishing patterns of male students working with male advisors and female students working with female advisors. The results persist and are magnified when we focus on the quality of the published articles, as measured by average Impact Factor, instead of number of articles. We find no evidence that the number of publications relates to the gender composition of the team. Although the gender effects are reasonably modest, past research on processes of positive feedback and cumulative advantage suggest that the difference will grow, not shrink, over the careers of these recent cohorts.
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-4711938
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2016
publisher Public Library of Science
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-47119382016-01-26 Gender and the Publication Output of Graduate Students: A Case Study Pezzoni, Michele Mairesse, Jacques Stephan, Paula Lane, Julia PLoS One Research Article We examine gender differences among the six PhD student cohorts 2004–2009 at the California Institute of Technology using a new dataset that includes information on trainees and their advisors and enables us to construct detailed measures of teams at the advisor level. We focus on the relationship between graduate student publications and: (1) their gender; (2) the gender of the advisor, (3) the gender pairing between the advisor and the student and (4) the gender composition of the team. We find that female graduate students co-author on average 8.5% fewer papers than men; that students writing with female advisors publish 7.7% more. Of particular note is that gender pairing matters: male students working with female advisors publish 10.0% more than male students working with male advisors; women students working with male advisors publish 8.5% less. There is no difference between the publishing patterns of male students working with male advisors and female students working with female advisors. The results persist and are magnified when we focus on the quality of the published articles, as measured by average Impact Factor, instead of number of articles. We find no evidence that the number of publications relates to the gender composition of the team. Although the gender effects are reasonably modest, past research on processes of positive feedback and cumulative advantage suggest that the difference will grow, not shrink, over the careers of these recent cohorts. Public Library of Science 2016-01-13 /pmc/articles/PMC4711938/ /pubmed/26760776 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0145146 Text en © 2016 Pezzoni et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited
spellingShingle Research Article
Pezzoni, Michele
Mairesse, Jacques
Stephan, Paula
Lane, Julia
Gender and the Publication Output of Graduate Students: A Case Study
title Gender and the Publication Output of Graduate Students: A Case Study
title_full Gender and the Publication Output of Graduate Students: A Case Study
title_fullStr Gender and the Publication Output of Graduate Students: A Case Study
title_full_unstemmed Gender and the Publication Output of Graduate Students: A Case Study
title_short Gender and the Publication Output of Graduate Students: A Case Study
title_sort gender and the publication output of graduate students: a case study
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4711938/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26760776
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0145146
work_keys_str_mv AT pezzonimichele genderandthepublicationoutputofgraduatestudentsacasestudy
AT mairessejacques genderandthepublicationoutputofgraduatestudentsacasestudy
AT stephanpaula genderandthepublicationoutputofgraduatestudentsacasestudy
AT lanejulia genderandthepublicationoutputofgraduatestudentsacasestudy