Gender differences in research productivity: a bibliometric analysis of the Italian academic system

Abstract

The literature dedicated to analysis of the difference in research productivity between the sexes tends to agree in indicating better performance for men. This study enters in the vein of work on the subject. Through bibliometric examination of the entire population of research personnel working in the scientific-technological disciplines of Italian university system, it confirms the presence of significant differences in productivity between men and women. But such differences result as being smaller than reported in a large part of the literature, confirming an ongoing tendency towards decline, and are also seen as more noticeable for quantitative performance indicators than other indicators. The gap between the sexes presents important sectorial specificities. In spite of the generally better performance of men, it can not be ignored that there are a significant number of scientific sectors in which the performance of women does not result as inferior.

References in corpus (1)

• The measurement of italian universities' research productivity by a non parametric-bibliometric methodology

Cited by in corpus (16)

• Historical comparison of gender inequality in scientific careers across countries and disciplines
• Gender differences in research collaboration
• The relationship among research productivity, research collaboration, and their determinants
• The contribution of star scientists to overall sex differences in research productivity
• The collaboration behavior of top scientists
• Gender differences in research performance within and between countries: Italy vs Norway
• The combined effects of age and seniority on research performance of full professors
• National-scale research performance assessment at the individual level
• Should the research performance of scientists be distinguished by gender?
• Gender bias in academic recruitment
• The effects of gender, age and academic rank on research diversification
• On the lack of women researchers in the Middle East & North Africa
• National research assessment exercises: a measure of the distortion of performance rankings when labor input is treated as uniform
• Crossing the hurdle: the determinants of individual scientific performance
• Do male leading authors retract more articles than female leading authors?
• Accounting for gender research performance differences in ranking universities