Elsevier's reports on gender in research

Gender in the Portugal Research Arena: A Case Study in European Leadership (2021)

Over the last two decades, Portugal has exhibited the largest percentage increase in women’s representation — an impressive 10% — putting the country at the leading edge of closing the gender gap in research.

Gender in the Portugal Research Arena: A Case Study in European Leadership(opens in new tab/window) offers a data-led look at the dynamics underlying Portugal’s leading edge. At the same time, it points to persisting gender gaps in research that require stronger transformative efforts, and it reveals how these gaps tend to mimic and perpetuate structural inequalities between women and men.

Together with distinguished academic leaders in Portugal, we have worked to put into context quantitative analyses with policy perspectives, insights and best practices. We hope to contribute insights from the experience of one country to inform policy and inspire targeted initiatives among policymakers, research leaders and funders around the world to achieve gender equity in research.

Key findings

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  Women represent nearly 50% of active authors in Portugal — the closest to gender parity for all EU28 countries analyzed

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  Women are highly represented across the life sciences and health sciences fields, where gains in Portugal continue to be largest, and in chemistry, chemical engineering and psychology

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  They remain most underrepresented within the physical sciences, especially in fields related to data science and AI such as computer science, mathematics and engineering

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  In Portugal, women are most highly represented among first authors, indicative of greater gender representation for early-career researchers

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    Also, unlike the trend seen in other countries, women researchers are likely to continue publishing over time, thus remaining in research

Portugal’s leadership is the result of many deliberate steps, the result of specific policy initiatives and a coordinated approach to targeted interventions. Such efforts are combined with a longstanding commitment to strong early education STEM interventions and research on gender equality, as well as funding to implement work-life balance and gender equity plans.

The Researcher Journey Through a Gender Lens (2020)

While the participation of women in research is increasing overall, inequality remains across geographies and subject areas in terms of publication outputs, citations, awarded grants and collaborations. That is among the findings of Elsevier's latest gender report.

The report, titled The researcher journey through a gender lens, examines research participation, career progression and perceptions across the European Union and 15 countries globally in 26 subject areas.

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  Focus on Japan (English)(opens in new tab/window)

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  Focus on Japan (Japanese)(opens in new tab/window)

Based on 20 years of data from Scopus across 12 geographies and all 27 Scopus subject areas, this is the third report Elsevier has produced on gender in the research landscape. It follows a global report released in 2017 and a report on Germany in 2015.

As with these previous studies, the 2020 report serves as a vehicle for understanding the role gender plays in the global research enterprise. Among the changes it brings are improvements in the methodology of inferred gender disambiguation of authors in Scopus and expanded analyses to cover a total of 16 countries/regions. It also includes new elements, such as career progression and collaboration network analyses and perspectives from researchers.

Publishing careers and mobility

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  The percentage of women among all authors in the cohort declines over time (between the year of authors’ first publication in 2009 up to 2018) in all countries and regions except Portugal

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  In every country, the percentage of women who continue to publish is lower than men who continue to publish

Collaboration networks

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  Across many subject areas and countries, men tend to have more co-authors than women and this difference is wider for authors with a longer publication history

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  Women and men are more similar in the way they are connected to their potential collaborative space (second-order collaborators) through their direct collaborators

Researcher perspectives

Researcher attitudes towards gender diversity and equity vary widely among men and women. Most of the differences in viewpoints are related to the importance in individual places on gender balance and to the perception of fairness in the academic system.

Survey question

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  There are two opposing opinions on the causes of gender imbalance and inequality in academia

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  Some groups (men and women) attribute gender inequality to the attitudes and ambition levels of women

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  Other groups attribute gender inequality to a systemic and cultural (unconscious) bias against women

Data

While the report itself is rich in terms of the data presented, we are pleased to make the underlying data available for non-commercial research purposes. This report incorporates methodology of inferred gender disambiguation of authors in Scopus. It has expanded analyses to cover 16 countries and regions. In addition, it includes career progression and collaboration network analyses as well as perspectives from researchers. Use the Tableau dashboards to look at all the countries and subject-specific author gender statistics:

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  Comparing across countries within a selected subject(opens in new tab/window)

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  Comparing across subjects within a selected country(opens in new tab/window)

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  Download the raw data behind the report from Mendeley Data Repository(opens in new tab/window)

This report also draws on qualitative data to illustrate the diverse viewpoints of researchers related to gender diversity and equity. This qualitative data was derived from surveying researchers as illustrated below.

To cite this report

De Kleijn, M, Jayabalasingham, B, Falk-Krzesinski, HJ, Collins, T, Kuiper-Hoyng, L, Cingolani, I, Zhang, J, Roberge, G, et al: The Researcher Journey Through a Gender Lens: An Examination of Research Participation, Career Progression and Perceptions Across the Globe (Elsevier, March 2020) Retrieved from www.elsevier.com/gender-report.

Gender in the Global Research Landscape (2017)

There is widespread agreement that fostering diversity is integral to innovation in research, and gender equality is key to achieving this. Critical issues related to gender disparity and bias must be examined by sound studies to support a data-informed approach to implementing interventions and policy related to gender inequality. A report released today provides unprecedented insight into these issues.

Gender in the Global Research Landscape(opens in new tab/window) was produced by Elsevier in partnership with global experts to provide an analytical framework for better understanding the role of gender within the structure of the global research enterprise. Based on 20 years of data from Scopus and ScienceDirect— across 12 geographies and all 27 Scopus subject areas — the report is an evidence-based examination of global research performance through a gender lens.

Mapping Gender in the German Research Arena (2015)

In Germany, even though the number and share of female scientists has increased in the past 5 years, they are still outnumbered and lag behind their male counterparts in research performance. That was a key finding of the new report Mapping Gender in the German Research Arena(opens in new tab/window), conducted by Elsevier’s Analytical Services team. It will be presented today at the Gender Summit 7 Europe(opens in new tab/window) in Berlin.