Gender gaps in international research collaboration: a bibliometric approach

Abstract

This paper addresses gender differences in international research collaboration measured through international co-authorship. The study is based on a dataset consisting of 5600 Norwegian researchers and their publication output during a 3-year period (44,000 publications). Two different indicators are calculated. First, the share of researchers that have been involved in international collaboration as measured by co-authorship, and second, the share of their publications with international co-authorship. The study shows that the field of research is by far the most important factor influencing the propensity to collaborate internationally. There are large differences from humanities on the one hand, where international collaboration in terms of co-authorship is less common, to the natural sciences on the other, where such collaboration is very frequent. On an overall level, we find distinct gender differences in international research collaboration in Norway in the favour of men. However, men and women are not equally distributed across fields and there are relatively more female researchers in fields where the international collaboration rates generally are lower. When the data are analysed by scientific field, academic position, and publication productivity of the researchers, the gender differences in the propensity to collaborate with colleagues in other countries are minor only, and not statistically significant. Concerning gender inequality in science, the main challenge seems to be the lower productivity level of female researchers, which obviously hinders their academic career development. Differences in international collaboration are unlikely to be an important factor in this respect, at least not in the Norwegian research context analysed in this study.

Internationalists and locals: international research collaboration in a resource-poor system

“…Our findings support conclusions drawn by Abramo et al (2013) about Italian scientists: male scientists exhibit higher collaboration rates in international collaboration. Our findings do not, however, support conclusions from Aksnes et al (2019), who found that gender is not an important determinant of international research collaboration. Consequently, in the Polish case, women's progression on the academic ladder is likely to be more difficult and more protracted, with less access to increasingly competitive individual research funding.…”

“…In Norway, Aksnes et al (2019) used the Cristin bibliographic database (Norwegian Science Index of all peer-reviewed publications) to study gender differences in international collaboration across the four largest universities. Again, the unit of analysis was the individual scientist; counting all individuals equally as single units, regardless of productivity (Aksnes et al 2019: 8), limited the effect of the outliers present in all systems.…”

“…Numerous studies (e.g., Cummings and Finkelstein 2012: 103;Rostan et al 2014: 122-123;Vabø et al 2014, Finkelstein andSethi 2014;Aksnes et al 2019) have reported a strong correlation between academic field and patterns of international collaboration. Using a predictive model based on data from 19 countries, Finkelstein and Sethi (2014) reported that scientists in "hard" fields were 2.3 times more likely to be highly internationalized than those in "soft" fields.…”

Do neutral names have an influence on scientists' research impact

“…When identical curriculum vitae are reviewed, more significant opportunity belongs to male job applicants who were considered to have adequate teaching, research, and service experiences (Steinpreis, Anders, & Ritzke, 1999). Corresponding to the underrepresentation at every academic level (Hopkins, Jawitz, McCarty, Goldman, & Basu, 2013) including Ph.D. enrolment (Hernánde‐Martín, Calle, Dueñas, Holgado, & Gómez‐Pérez, 2019), women are fewer in decision‐making designation (Hopkins et al, 2013), academic promotion (Carter, Smith, & Osteen, 2017), permanent position (Bailey et al, 2017), international research collaboration (Aksnes et al, 2019; Paul‐Hus et al, 2015) and other aspects. In terms of wages, awards, equipment, and invitations as keynote speakers at essential conferences, women are also at the disadvantage position (Lincoln, Pincus, Koster, & Leboy, 2012).…”

Participação Feminina em Comitês de Programa de Simpósios da Computação

“…Por razões históricas e culturais, há um desequilíbrio na participação de homens e mulheres na educação e na carreira de diversasáreas. De fato, na Academia, as diferenças são significativas na autoria de artigos [Arruda et al 2009, Mihalcea andWelch 2015] e na colaboração internacional [Aksnes et al 2019]. Tal falta de diversidade de gênero impacta a produtividade [Turban et al 2019], e na Computação nãoé diferente.…”