A new, 20-year report from Elsevier today releases data on women in international research publishing: progress and more work needed.

By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson

See also: Elsevier’s Michiel Kolman in Amsterdam on Diversity in STM

Bayazit: To ‘Inform Targeted Interventions’

A 40-page report released this morning (June 10) by the Amsterdam-based Elsevier takes an optimistic cue, titled Progress Toward Gender Equality in Research and Innovation: 2024 Review.

To her credit, Kumsal Bayazit—the woman CEO in this publishing giant’s 144-year history—writes in her introduction, “There is progress but it is slow. At the current pace of change, equality remains too far away and further action is needed to accelerate change.

“Our hope is that the rich insights in this report, together with the extensive data available on the companion ‘Gender Diversity Dashboard,’ will help stimulate dialogue, sharing of best practice, and inform targeted interventions to support women researchers and innovators.”

And that’s the issue and the focus of this newly arrived survey of one of the world’s largest powerhouses in academic publishing: who writes the research it publishes?

Bayazit looks to Marie Curie for inspiration, positioning the question as the two-sided construct that these issues actually are, always: “We have sought to notice both ‘what has been done’ and ‘what remains to be done.’

The cooling rationale of that viewpoint lifts this research-by-a-research-publisher above the hair-tearing emotionality that often accompanies today’s inequities in gender (many of them flatly unforgivable in the current era, yet persistent). At a time when the word “political” itself can be politically weaponized, this exercise in politics and publishing is seated in the truths of skill and talent; of intelligence and experimentation by the best possible people, both men and women, in some of the most critical, urgent issues the world faces.

What the company says makes this effort a first-of-its-kind inquiry is both its 20-year time span and its range of “intersecting disciplines and geographies.” It steps around the natural impulse to sugarcoat the bad news, too, the company telling the news media today, “Although women’s representation in mathematics, engineering, and computer science is increasing, it is not projected to reach parity with men’s until 2052.

“And, while grant funding for women is rising—from 29 percent in 2009 to 37 percent in 2022—translation of research into innovation through patent applications, which serve as a proxy for understanding involvement in the full value chain of research, is much lower for women researchers. This is despite women’s strong performance in disciplines that relate to solving some of the biggest challenges the world faces, as expressed in the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals.”

Nevertheless, the report leads, understandably, with its best number, one that does indicate that positive dynamics are providing growing support to the work of some women in research.

Top-Line Elements of the Elsevier Gender Report

The report sees women gaining in their share of active researchers internationally from 28 percent in 2001 to 41 percent in 2022. Health sciences reportedly show strong representation.

“However,” the associated discussion points out, “gender diversity hasn’t progressed equally in all fields. For example, in the physical sciences, women represent just 33 percent of researchers.”

In addition, it’s pointed out that “In multiple STEM disciplines, women’s participation is much lower. Women’s representation in research has increased across all cohorts, from early-career to advanced-career researchers. It’s also important to note that achieving parity in participation doesn’t necessarily equate to achieving equality opportunities, such as funding and representation in senior positions.”

International Regions and Women Researchers’ Gains

Women’s participation in the research workforce differs substantially by country and/or region, in the interpretation of Elsevier’s research.

The associated graphic is drawn from the ‘Gender Diversity Dashboard’ that’s provided with the new report.

• In Portugal and Argentina, just over half, 52 percent, of active researchers, per Elsevier’s reportage, are women.
• The company sees women making up nearly half of active researchers in Brazil, Spain, and Italy, and around 40 percent in the United States and United Kingdom.
• However, women make up 33 percent in India, which Elsevier says is now the world’s third-largest research producing country.
• The report sees 30 percent of researchers being women in Egypt and less than a quarter, 22 percent, of active researchers in Japan.
• Per Elsevier’s study, the average share of women among grant awardees increased globally from 29 percent in 2009 to 37 percent in 2022.
• The largest increases were for the Netherlands at a gain of 19 percentage points; Denmark, gaining 13 points; the United Kingdom, up 12 points; France, up 10 percentage points; Canada with a gain of 10; and Portugal up eight.

Women Researchers and the UN’s SDGs

Women, the report’s results indicate, comprise the majority of active researchers working on some UN Sustainable Development Goal research areas, including:

• Education (SDG 4)
• Gender equality (SDG 5)
• Reduction of inequalities (SDG 10)
• Peace and justice (SDG 16)

In 10 of the 17 SDGs, proportionally slightly more women engage in more multidisciplinary research than men. Multidisciplinary research, in which researchers from various disciplines collaborate, is considered important to solving complex global challenges.

Additional Leading Points

• “Publications authored by men are, on average, cited more,” the report’s results indicate, although the gap tends to diminish as careers advance. Citation metrics are widely used in bibliometrics as a proxy for excellence and relevance of research.”
• On the other hand, “Publications involving women are more likely to be cited in policy documents than publications by men. This holds,” the study says, “across health sciences and physical sciences, as measured by year-normalized policy citation scores.” It also holds across all analyzed countries between 2018 and 2022, except for Argentina.
• As of 2022, three-quarters of patent applications are filed either by men along or by teams consisting entirely of men. Nearly all patent-filing teams (97 percent) have at least one man on them. By contrast, just 3 percent of applications as of 2022 were filed by all-women teams.” In this study, Germany was the market showing the smallest share of patent applications filed.

Five Recommendations

Perhaps the most unremarkable element of the new report is its five recommendations to handle the room for improvement.

This is not to say that these aren’t good ideas, of course, but that they live close to the most obvious ideas for response.

• “Accelerate commitments and actions toward greater gender equality in research
• “Stop the decline in participation with rising seniority by prioritizing the retention of early-career women researchers in mid- and advanced-career stages.
• “Develop incentive structures to help women play an equal part in the full research and innovation value chain, including patents.
• “Apply a broad range of indicators to measure research effectiveness, including societal and policy impact.
• “Continue to collect and report inclusion and diversity data to monitor progress, identify gaps, evaluate policies, and drive accountability.”

A ‘Gender Diversity Dashboard’

What the company calls its Gender Diversity Dashboard is a useful collection of graphics that can be adjusted to research various values and interests.

“There is progress but it is slow. At the current pace of change, equality remains too far away and further action is needed to accelerate change.”Kumsal Bayazit, Elsevier

For example, if we choose the right-alley option of “Trends Over Time” and then select the Decision Sciences—the study of how to make decisions using available information and predicting future risks and changes—and seat our inquiry in a career cohort of six to 10 years, and then draw it onto the European Union’s 27 markets, the United States, and an aggregate called “World,”  we get the following graphic under “research impact,” with the recent entry of women’s representation in the EU rather interesting, if belated.

Clearly, what’s interesting and hopeful here is the “World Breakdown by Year” graphic you find on the Overview page of the dashboard, in which the share of author count in all subjects is rising for women to that 41-percent mark and receding for men to a 58.6-percent mark in 2022 from 71.7 percent in 2001.

If anything, visuals make Bayazit’s and her researchers’ cautions clear: A lot of time and progress remain to be accomplished in bringing women and me closer to equal research publication, support, visibility, and impact. But surely quantifying and visualizing what can be seen as progress so far is not only encouraging but also enabling for moving forward.

The new report material and its associated content can be found here. A webinar sign-up option and a couple of associated articles can be found here.

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More from Publishing Perspectives on academic and scholarly publishing and its issues is here; more on gender in world publishing is here; more on women in international publishing is here; and more on industry statistics is here.