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

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 pa...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Ucar, Iñaki, Torre, Margarita, Elías, Antonio
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8956178/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35333874
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0264265
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author Ucar, Iñaki
Torre, Margarita
Elías, Antonio
author_facet Ucar, Iñaki
Torre, Margarita
Elías, Antonio
author_sort Ucar, Iñaki
collection PubMed
description 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.
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spelling pubmed-89561782022-03-26 Mind the gender gap: COVID-19 lockdown effects on gender differences in preprint submissions Ucar, Iñaki Torre, Margarita Elías, Antonio PLoS One Research Article 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. Public Library of Science 2022-03-25 /pmc/articles/PMC8956178/ /pubmed/35333874 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0264265 Text en © 2022 Ucar et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://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
Ucar, Iñaki
Torre, Margarita
Elías, Antonio
Mind the gender gap: COVID-19 lockdown effects on gender differences in preprint submissions
title Mind the gender gap: COVID-19 lockdown effects on gender differences in preprint submissions
title_full Mind the gender gap: COVID-19 lockdown effects on gender differences in preprint submissions
title_fullStr Mind the gender gap: COVID-19 lockdown effects on gender differences in preprint submissions
title_full_unstemmed Mind the gender gap: COVID-19 lockdown effects on gender differences in preprint submissions
title_short Mind the gender gap: COVID-19 lockdown effects on gender differences in preprint submissions
title_sort mind the gender gap: covid-19 lockdown effects on gender differences in preprint submissions
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8956178/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35333874
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0264265
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