Women scientists don’t get authorship they should, new study suggests

Teams are conducting science. According to a study published today in Nature, women are less likely to be authors than men in their research group at the same career stage, even accounting for the hours each individual worked on the project. The researchers write that the consequences of the disparity on the retention of senior women in the sciences are not likely to be positive.

The percentage of women in the field of science, technology, engineering, and math has been shown to affect the number of papers written by women. It is difficult to identify who was left off the author lists. The new study was able to overcome this hurdle by drawing on a uniquely detailed data set of nearly 10,000 U.S. based scientific research teams, 128,859 individuals who were employed by those teams from 2013 to 2016 and 39,426 journal articles they produced. The data gave the authors a way to link who did the work with who got credit for it. The study used a method that involved an error and didn't allow the identification of non-binary researchers.

Dashun Wang, a professor at Northwestern University who studies team science, says that the paper probes into the "dark matter" behind gender inequalities. tribution is a key factor in driving inequality.

What is happening behind the scenes, what is the reason behind the authorship gender gap is addressed in the paper. The study shows that undercrediting contributions is why women are less represented as authors.

There are stories about women being left off author lists. She says she knows a lot of women who have had this experience, but she didn't know how big it was. People might assume that the occasional stories are outliers. They are not, but it is much more systemic.

Glennon acknowledges that the study can't control everything. It is1-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-6556

She notes that women don't feel appreciated. Women were more likely than men to report that they were excluded from authorship and that their colleagues underestimated their contributions to a paper, according to a survey of 2446 scientists. Women are more likely to see authorship decisions as unfair than men, according to a study.

Glennon says that every lab has its own set of rules and rules for authorship. The door can be left open for bias. She says that PIs may reward someone they get along with or someone who is more visible in the lab. She wants funding agencies or institutions to set explicit rules for authorship. It can't be just any PI.

Matthew Ross is the lead author of the study. Less women will get promoted and less women will be in leadership positions in science if the problem isn't fixed.