Gender Bias in Scientific Communication: A Categorized Bibliography

Introductory Note

All publications included in the bibliography are provided with a DOI and/or URL to facilitate access to the full text.

The publications are organized into thematic categories to provide contextual clarity. The index is designed for quick and easy online navigation through thematic folders, with each entry clickable and linking directly to the corresponding bibliographic report. This classification highlights the breadth and diversity of perspectives explored in the literature on the topic.

SOURCES: SCOPUS, GOOGLE SCHOLAR, MEDLINE/PUBMED, REPEC, BIOMED.NEWS.

UPDATES: Updates are carried out semi-annually.

EDITORS: eLENA gALLINA, vALENTINA dAVIGHI

Methodological Note

Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria: Articles from journals (research articles and reviews), conference proceedings, working papers, pre-prints (in the economic field only), datasets, books, and book chapters are included.
The selection of individual documents within these categories is based on the following criteria:
– Peer review status (either explicitly declared by the source or inferred from the indexing criteria of the databases)
– Presence of abstracts.

In addition to publications that do not meet the criteria outlined above, those addressing aspects of gender disparity that are not directly linked to the field of scientific research are excluded, such as gender gaps in employment and salaries within public or private institutions, access to political positions, the doctor-patient relationship, and domestic relationships. 

Sources: The search began in 2022 and is ongoing in 2023, utilizing the following sources:
– The multidisciplinary databases Scopus (www.scopus.com) and Google Scholar (scholar.google.com) (1)
– The biomedical database Medline/PubMed (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov) (2)
– The RePEc repository for Economics and Social Sciences (http://nep.repec.org) via the Nep-Gen reporting service (3)
– The independent bibliographic reporting service Biomed.news, particularly the ‘Evaluation of Research’ section (http://biomed.news/bims-evares) (4).

Sorting Criteria: The selected records were imported, organized, and deduplicated using the open-source software Zotero, and arranged into thematic folders. The records are sorted chronologically, from the oldest to the most recent

Accessibility and Updates: The thematic folders serve as entries in a searchable online index. Each entry is clickable, linking to the full bibliography, which is available via the Zotero cloud.

Notes

(1) The research strategy employed in Scopus involved the use of predefined search terms related to gender bias within bibliometrics, informetrics, scientometrics, and research evaluation (e.g., gender; bibliometric; quantitative science studies), connected using Boolean operators. Results were assessed based on available metadata, abstracts, and full-texts when applicable. From the selected records for inclusion in the bibliography, the search was extended to related and similar contributions through citation searching. WOS and Google Scholar were used as control tools. A notification system was set up using the same search parameters to identify new records and facilitate ongoing updates to the bibliography.

(2) The search strategy in Medline/PubMed followed a similar approach to that used in Scopus. Starting with the search string (Gender Equity[mesh] OR sexism[mesh]) AND (universities[mesh] OR faculty[MESH] OR medical writing[MESH] OR periodicals as topic[MESH] OR bibliometrics[MESH] OR medical literature[MESH] OR academic performance[MESH]), the results and related records were evaluated based on metadata, abstracts, and full-texts where available. A notification system was also set up to regularly update the bibliography with new records and periodic updates.

(3) In RePEc, the research strategy involved subscribing to the New Economics Papers service, which filters newly added publications and organizes them into thematic reports. Subscribing to a thematic report allowed for periodic email notifications of updates. The “gender” report (nep-gen) was manually scanned and individual records were evaluated.

(4) The search strategy used in Biomed.news involved identifying the relevant thematic section and manually scanning the proposed records, evaluating them based on metadata and abstracts.