Gender Citation Gap in Academic Publishing

This Open Educational Resource (OER) addresses the phenomenon of the gender citation gap in academic publishing, with a particular focus on its implications for research evaluation, visibility, and scientific progress. The resource synthesises empirical evidence from multiple disciplines, including Medicine, Natural Language Processing (NLP), and Library and Information Science (LIS), demonstrating persistent gender-based disparities in authorship, citation patterns, and self-citation practices.

The OER explains how citation counts, frequently used as indicators of research impact and quality, may reproduce structural biases. Studies presented in the infographic show that women publish less frequently in several disciplines, receive fewer citations on average, and engage in significantly fewer self-citations compared to men. In some fields, papers authored by men receive substantially higher citation counts, particularly in cases of multiple male authorship. The resource also highlights methodological challenges in large-scale citation analysis, including name-based gender identification, treatment of multi-authored papers, and the influence of academic seniority.

Developed within the framework of the European project GEDIS (Gender Diversity in Information Science), this OER aims to promote critical awareness of gender bias in scholarly communication and to support evidence-based reflection in higher education.