Abstract
This study is based on the fact that the surnames of many Russian scientists have gender endings, with “a” denoting a female, so that the sex of most of them can be readily determined from the listing of authors in the Web of Science (WoS). A comparison was made between the proportion of females in 1985, 1995, and 2005, with a corresponding analysis of the major fields in which they worked, their propensity to co-author papers internationally (which often necessitates having the opportunity to travel to conferences abroad to meet possible colleagues), and their citation records. We found, as expected, that women had a higher presence in the biological sciences and a very low presence in engineering, mathematics, and physics. Their citation scores, on a fractionated basis, were lower than those for men in almost all fields and years, and were not explained by their writing of fewer reviews and papers in English (both of which lead to higher citations), or their lower amount of international collaboration in 1995 and 2005 after Russia had become a more open society.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Abramo, G., D’Angelo, C. A., & Caprasecca, A. (2009). Gender differences in research productivity: A bibliometric analysis of the Italian academic system. Scientometrics, 79, 517–539.
Agamova, N., & Aakhverdyan, A. (2000). Russian females in science and higher education on the 150th anniversary of Sophia Kovalevskaya. Voprosy of History of Science and Technology, 1, 141–153.
Anon (2010). Promoting women in science and medicine. The Lancet, 376, 1712.
Batista, P. D., & Leta, J. (2009) Brazilian authors’ scientific performance: Does gender matter? In Proceedings of the 12th international conference on scientometrics and informetrics (pp. 343–353). Brazil: Rio de Janeiro.
Bookstein, A., & Yitzhaki, M. (1999). Own-language preference: A new measure of “relative language self-citation”. Scientometrics, 46, 337–348.
Carrell, S. E., Page, M. E., & West, J. E. (2010). Sex and science: How professor gender perpetuates the gender gap. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 125, 1101–1144.
Cech, E. A., & Blair-Loy, M. (2010). Perceiving glass ceilings? Meritocratic versus structural explanations of gender inequality among women in science and technology. Social Problems, 57, 371–397.
de Cheveigne, S. (2009). The career paths of women (and men) in French research. Social Studies of Science, 39, 113–136.
Gomez, A., Arrizabalaga, E., & Sanchez, B. (2010). The role of women in construction research. Materiales de Construccion, 60, 143–150.
Indicators on Science. (2006). Handbook of the higher school of economics. Moscow: Indicators on Science.
Jagsi, R., Guancial, E. A., Worobey, C. C., et al. (2006). The “gender gap” in authorship of academic medical literature—A 35-year perspective. New England Journal of Medicine, 355, 281–287.
Kondro, W. (2002). Canada: Few women win new academic chairs. Science, 296, 2319.
Kyvik, S., & Teigen, M. (1996). Child care, research collaboration, and gender differences in scientific productivity. Science, Technology & Human Values, 21, 54–71.
Leta, J. (2003). As mulheres na ciência brasileira: Crescimento, contrastes e um perfil de sucesso. Revista de Estudos Avançados, 49, 271–284.
Lewison, G. (2001). The quantity and quality of female researchers: A bibliometric study of Iceland. Scientometrics, 52, 29–43.
Lewison, G. (2003). The publication of cancer research papers in high impact journals. Aslib Proceedings, 55, 379–387.
Lewison, G. (2009). The percentage of reviews in research output: A simple measure of research esteem. Research Evaluation, 18, 25–37.
Lewison, G., & Dawson, G. (1998). The effect of funding on the outputs of biomedical research. Scientometrics, 41, 17–27.
Lewison, G., & Leta, J. (2003). The contribution of women in Brazilian science: A case study in astronomy, immunology and oceanography. Scientometrics, 57, 339–353.
Lewison, G., & Markusova, V. (2010). The evaluation of Russian cancer research. Research Evaluation, 19, 129–144.
Markusova, V. (1997). The contribution of Russian women to science (according to the analysis of ISF grants in 1995). In Proceedings of the sixth conference of the International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics, Jerusalem, Israel (pp. 257–264).
Markusova, V. A., Minin, V. A., Libkind, A., & Arapov, M. V. (2000). Russian science in transition: A bibliometric study. In B. Kelcey (Ed.), Proceedings of the 18th Polar Libraries Colloquy, Winnipeg, Canada (pp. 85–98).
Markusova, V., Ivanov, V., & Varshavsky, A. (2009). Bibliometric indicators of Russian science and the Russian academy of sciences, 1997–2007. Herald of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 7, 483–491.
Mauleon, E., Bordons, M., & Oppenheim, C. (2008). The effect of gender on research staff success in life sciences in the Spanish national research council. Research Evaluation, 17, 213–225.
Mendlowicz, M. V., Coutinho, E. S. F., Laks, J., et al. (2011). Is there a “gender gap” in authorship of the main Brazilian psychiatric journals at the beginning of the 21st century? Scientometrics, 86, 27–37.
Mozafarian, M., & Jamali, H. R. (2008). Iranian women in science: A gender study of scientific productivity in an Islamic country. Aslib Proceedings, 60, 463–473.
Narin, F. (1976). Evaluative bibliometrics—The use of publication and citation analysis in the evaluation of scientific activity (pp. 195–198). Cherry Hill: Computer Horizons.
Prijic-Samarzija, S., Holjevac, I. A., & Turk, M. (2009). Women in science: A glass ceiling. Drustvena Istrazivanja, 18, 1049–1073.
Prpic, K. (2002). Gender and productivity differentials in science. Scientometrics, 55, 27–58.
Pudovkin, A. (2011). Where are published and how are cited Russian researchers? Troitsky Variant, 4(73), 10.
Rossi, A. S. (1965). Women in science: Why so few? Science, 148, 1196–1202.
Sanchez-Guzman, M. A., & Corona-Vazquez, T. (2009). Women’s participation in science. Gaceta Medica de Mexico, 145, 71–76.
Snell, C., Sorensen, J., Rodriguez, J. J., & Kuanliang, A. (2009). Gender differences in research productivity among criminal justice and criminology scholars. Journal of Criminal Justice, 37, 288–295.
Stewart, A., Malley, J. E., & LaVaque-Manty, D. (2007). Transforming science and engineering: Advancing academic women. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. ISBN 9780472116034.
Tobias, S., Urry, M., & Venkatesan, A. (2002). Physics: For women, the last frontier. Science, 296, 1201.
van Leeuwen, T. N., Moed, H. F., Tijssen, R. J. W., et al. (2000). First evidence of serious language-bias in the use of citation analysis for the evaluation of national science systems. Research Evaluation, 8, 155–156.
Vasconcelos, S. M. R., Sorenson, M. M., & Leta, J. (2007). Scientist-friendly policies for non-native English-speaking authors: Timely and welcome. Brazilian Journal of Medical and Biological Research, 40, 743–747.
Walters, J., & McNeely, C. L. (2010). Recasting title IX: Addressing gender equity in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics professoriate. Review of Policy Research, 27, 317–332.
Webster, B. M. (2001). Polish women in science: A bibliometric analysis of Polish science and its publications, 1980–1999. Research Evaluation, 10, 185–194.
Wenneras, C., & Wold, A. (1997). Nepotism and sexism in peer review. Nature, 387, 341–343.
Wilson, C., & Markusova, V. A. (2004). Changes in the scientific output of Russia from 1980–2000 as reflected in the science citation index in relation to national politico-economic factors. Scientometrics, 59, 345–389.
Acknowledgments
We are grateful to Philip Roe who wrote the macros that enabled us to create the master files, and analyse the names of the authors and the papers’ geographical origins. Dr Sergei Kudryashov of the German Historical Institute in Moscow kindly advised on the endings of un-gendered Russian names.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Lewison, G., Markusova, V. Female researchers in Russia: have they become more visible?. Scientometrics 89, 139–152 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-011-0435-5
Received:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-011-0435-5