Gender imbalance in citations most pronounced in high-impact neuroscience journals

Abstract

In the past several years, neuroscience, like many other fields, has worked to address pervasive gender imbalances. Although tangible improvements have been made in academic publishing and conference participation, gender imbalances in citations among leading neuroscience journals persist and are increasing with time. Here, we expand upon prior work by providing a more comprehensive analysis of citation practices across fifty journals to improve our understanding of the dynamics of the field as a whole, particularly across different kinds of journals. We first confirm that reference lists tend to include more papers with men as first and last author than expected if gender were unrelated to citation practices. Further, we demonstrate that this effect is strongest in the most influential journals. We also find that the apparent closure of the gender gap is due to the interaction of three unique, nuanced patterns of citation: one that is characterized by relative overcitation of papers with men as both first and last author; one that is characterized by relative overcitation of women as the last author, and one that is characterized by relative undercitation of women as the first author. In addition, we find that these patterns of citation are not distributed evenly across the field: more prestigious journals tend to have articles with citation gaps favoring men, while less prestigious journals tend to overcite papers with women as last authors. We discuss potential drivers for these patterns and suggest some implications for the field moving forward.